The first major Red Bull change spotted by Rosberg after Christian Horner sacking

Nico Rosberg reckons he has spotted a chance in Yuki Tsunoda’s demeanour after Laurent Mekies replaced Christian Horner at Red Bull.

The shock departure of Horner from Red Bull had the added consequence of a reunion between Mekies and Tsunoda with both having been at Racing Bulls last year – and Rosberg believes it has benefited the misfiring driver.

Nico Rosberg spots Laurent Mekies and Yuki Tsunoda moment

Tsunoda may have left Belgium without a point but there were at least some signs of improvement, notably his qualifying position of seventh and the fact that his failure to score points can be blamed on the team’s late pit call rather than anything he did.

But Rosberg noted a moment between Tsunoda and Mekies that the 2016 World Champion believes is reflective of how their relationship will be going forward.

“He has now really empowered Yuki Tsunoda this weekend. He has given him the new upgrade, that he can have the new floor himself as well, not just Verstappen,” he said on Sky F1.

“He gives him a thumbs up and a smile after sessions. After qualifying, they connected as Yuki was driving in. He saw Laurent on the pit wall, giving him a big smile and a thumbs-up.

“That makes a huge difference to a driver when suddenly, he sees that he has the support from the team.

“Whereas before, he said, I heard that he felt like he was on a bit of an island on his own, in a team that was for Max Verstappen and they only cared about Max Verstappen. Now, Laurent straight away is also caring about Yuki.”

That theory was backed up by Mekies’ words after the race in which he praised the 25-year-old for quickly adapating to the new floor fitted to his RB21.

“For the floor, we got a lot of publicity for it but it’s nothing unusual or nothing different here,” Mekies told media at Spa, including PlanetF1.com.

“You push very, very hard to get the latest specification as soon as you can at the racetrack. You get it for one car, and you get it for the second car.

“It’s based on when are the parts coming? When is your next sample of that part coming? And sometimes you are surprised, because one comes in earlier, one comes in later. So as soon as it became available, we were then faced with the choice to either wait for the following weekend or to use that slightly unusual window between sprint and main quali, which comes with some risk.

“It comes with some risk because it was extremely tight to be able to see the parts of the car so he did an amazing job.

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“And as you have seen, we were actually slightly late going out for qualifying and then you normally pay a price, because the drivers need to adapt and it’s not very nice to go into qualifying with a new specification car.

“But anyway, we felt it was worth the risk and the effort and Yuki did an amazing job with it to adapt through qualifying to it, and did certainly a big step of performance.

“And did a very, very strong quali so it’s certainly a superb job he has done to adapt, but to extract the car’s performance in these conditions.”

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