Gabriel Bortoletto is the reigning F2 champion as he embarks on his first year in Formula One. On paper he had one of the toughest jobs of the rookie class of ’25, with his team mate Nico Hulkenberg being recognised as a specialist in qualifying.
It has indeed been a baptism of fire for the young Italian, with the difficult to drove Sauber car bottom of the pile for the first six rounds the year. His fellow rookies have all enjoyed more airtime than Bortoleto, with Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes, Isack Hadjar at the Racing Bulls and Ollie Bearman of Haas all having scored more points than the Sauber driver.
Yet despite only being ahead of Jack Doohan and Franco Colapinto in the driver standings, the F1 elder statesmen Fernando Alonso believes Bortoleto is the “greatest of his generation”
Alonso says “the best of generation”
“Very good but no surprises at all. Last year in Abu Dhabi, I think that he is the best of this generation. He won Formula 3 as a rookie, he won Formula 2 as a rookie. No testing with older versions of cars, no TPC programmes, no nothing. Coming to Formula 1, still delivering an incredible job,” said the Spaniard.
This may surprise folk who take a swift glance at the drivers’ championship, with Hulkenberg on 37 while Gabriel has just 4. But behind the headline position the Italian retains, are numbers which suggests he is in fact much better than his ranking suggests.
The qualifying head to head between the Sauber team mates is 7-7, and indeed Hulkenberg is quicker on average but not by much. The average gap in favour of the German is just 0.059 seconds, much closer than Hamilton and Leclerc.
That said, Bortoleto has been involved with his fair share of incidents.In Australia he spun out of his maiden Grand Prix and in Saudi he also spun out during the first season of qualifying. An erratic move in the race almost took out Fernando Alonso and again in Imola he crashed heavily in practice.
Other 2025 rookies steal the limelight
There was a lap 1 collision with Kimi Antonelli in Monaco and whilst having far better tyres than Alonso, we was easily beaten by the Aston Martin in the closing stages of the race. At the recent British Grand Prix he crashed out of FP3 and again during the mixed weather conditions in the race on Sunday.
Gabriel is well aware that his team mate has stolen the limelight, but believes the real pace between them is far closer than most people think. “This is very common,” Bortoleto told The Race when asked whether he was receiving the recognition he deserved.
“If I had a car that finished in the top three every single race and I was third, people would say, ‘Oh, in his rookie season he’s finishing third every single round, he’s doing an amazing job’, but maybe I would not be doing an amazing job.
“Sometimes, you are doing an amazing job – and I’m not saying that’s me – but the maximum you can achieve is a P16 or a P17 and you extracted everything from the car. People don’t see it because it’s [towards] the back and don’t understand what you’re doing with the car you have. That’s why it’s important to have a car that’s competitive and can score points.”
Braking style needs more work
“I don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” continues the Italian. “The only people I need to prove things to are those in the team and they all appreciate this. They have seen since the beginning of the year what the potential is, and the progress, the pace. It’s always nice to be recognised because you are doing a good job, scoring points [in Austria] was very good for the confidence of the team.”
There’s a huge learning curve with the current generation of F1 cars, something even the great Lewis Hamilton has struggled with. Now the seven times champion is in his third season behind his team mate since the introduction of ground effect cars in 2022.
Data shows Bortoleto has been breaking later than Hulklenberg, something the German has found retains the balance of the car as it enters the corners. But Gabriel knows he must adapt his driving style, even from corner to corner, if he’s going to be the best he can be.
“These F1 cars are very sensitive, with the floor effect and everything. I’m still figuring out the fastest way to drive. I feel comfortable now with the car and how I’m driving it, but you’re going so fast that if you brake a little bit later you can end up missing the corner completely. You need to nail it every single time and do a perfect line to keep it on track.”
No single driving style is best
“There’s corners that are better the way you explained, and there are corners that actually are the opposite because it’s how you want to approach and want the platform to be positioned. Also, it’s a bit of driving style as well, there is no right or wrong. You need to nail it and not unsettle the car too much, not make it too drastic.”
“I want to be the most complete driver,” said Bortoleto. “I don’t want to be a driver that has one driving style because I don’t think this is right. You should adapt to the condition you have. Obviously there is a driving style that is more suitable to yourself and what’s natural, but I want to become a driver that can change my approach for every single corner of the track, drive with a different technique, hitting the brakes in a different way, applying the throttle in a different way, attacking the corner more, attacking the corner less.”
“That’s what I want to become one day, a driver that is able to do all these things. I’m making steps in this direction. Still, sometimes there is a corner I lose because I try to do it in my natural way. You have data, you learn, you try to copy and do better but the most difficult part about being a racing driver is to be that complete. In my life, I’ve not seen many drivers being able to do that. And the ones I’ve seen, they are all world champions,” he concluded.
Bortoleto’s one lap pace will inevitably improve but even for now he is competing well on Saturday with one of the best in the business across the garage. Of course Hulkenberg’s P5 in qualifying in Barcelona, made his team mate’s starting place of P12 look by the cars own standards slow.
Gabriel hasn’t crashed or done as much damage as Franco Colapinto, and at times the team has offered him the wrong race strategy and he has had this fair share of bad luck too. Yet for Alonso to declare him the best of the generation required us to dig up some stats, which appear to support the Spaniard’s conclusions.
Wheatley reveals why he left Red Bull
One of the supposed reasons for the sacking of team boss Christian Horner, has been suggested to be the alleged ‘brain drain’ that the team has suffered in recent years. Long standing Chief engineer Rob Marshall was the first to hand in his notice in 2023 as McLaren offered him the role their technical director.
Adrian Newey was next to announce his departure last May, with the F1 car design guru suggesting he may take a sabbatical. Yet Aston Martin offered Newey something he always regretted not negotiating for with his previous three teams, that off shares in the racing outfit he will attempt to take to the front of the field.
That same weekend in Miami, the team’s sporting director Jonathan Wheatley was reported to be leaving the Red Bull team aswell. Whilst the reports were false, it triggered “difficulties” at work, Wheatley now reveals, yet the upside was the interest it created from other teams in the paddock…… READ MORE
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