Gabriel Bortoleto was pleased to be in the fight against Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen in F1 Hungarian GP, as Nico Hulkenberg was confused by start penalty.
Not only Sauber’s Bortoleto secured his best qualifying result, he went on to finish sixth and secure his best race result in F1 Hungarian GP at Hungaroring. It was a fine return that kept the Swiss outfit in points again as they are closing in on Williams in the battle for fifth.
Bortoleto was sandwiched between Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen at one point and kept the Dutchman at bay, which forced Red Bull to change his strategy. That was crucial from the Brazilian, that helped him secure sixth since the competition behind was a bit far off.
He couldn’t press onto Alonso, though, who was quicker and smart enough to keep his nose ahead. But the Brazilian was happy to fight them. “Two-time world champ, four-time world champ, and I’m in the middle, it’s just something amazing that I’m so glad to experience already in my rookie season and be fighting against these guys,” said Bortoleto to media.
“It’s just amazing. Honestly, I’m so happy. It was a great race and we did everything we could. I gave my best. I tried to keep him [Verstappen] behind. It’s not easy. He was flying at that moment, putting a lot of pressure. Fernando was slowing down a lot. Honestly, it was very nice to fight against him. He [Alonso] was laughing because he was like, ‘you thought you were quicker, right?’
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I thought’. He was like, ‘Not this time.’ Maybe next time. He had a better pace today. It was impossible [to beat him]. It was just very difficult unless he does a very big mistake, but pure pace, he was faster. Yes, [learning any tricks about defending from Fernando]. He knows exactly where to slow down and where to push. It’s a very unique thing.
“He’s a top driver on doing this type of thing,” summed up Bortoleto, who termed Hungary as the best of the year for him. He felt he did all he could to extract from the car. “This one has been the best so far,” he continued. “I had pure pace and had great result. “I think we really maximised the car we had today or even did better because I overtook Lance at the first lap.
“And we know the Aston had a very good pace this weekend,” summed up Bortoleto. The Brazilian escaped any penalty for a potential jump start. But teammate Hulkenberg didn’t. The 5s time penalty wouldn’t have mattered, though, considering how his race panned out. He reckons the movement happened when he put the car in first gear, which was showed on world feed.
“You tell me? Did it look like that? I didn’t get much info in the race, yeah,” said Hulkenberg to media. “I think it was just that when the car just does a little move, first gear with the clutch. I was a bit on the late side with that, honestly after I didn’t register that I made a jump start, I don’t know, it must be that.
“And I don’t think so [without the penalty, it would have been any better]. I need to see the race trace but I mean Lewis was 20s something in front of me. It was a strange one because honestly I didn’t register it, I think I must have…when I engaged first gear, I might have jumped and I think that triggered the alarm, so that’s annoying,” summed up Hulkenberg.
He further elaborated on how his race turned out to be, where he noted that he lost the race in qualifying. The team has an idea of what could have gone wrong on Saturday, but it is mostly small details that they missed out on. He is confident of cleaner weekends after summer break.
“I don’t know, in free air, the pace looked all right but then as soon as you come behind one car, in few cases, I came behind 2-3 cars, someone is pulling the plug, it is pretty nasty with these cars to follow,” continued Hulkenberg. “It is much more difficult than low speed now than high speed with these cars which makes it really tough.
“So, yeah, I think it all goes back to qualifying, being out of position it is really difficult to make progress here. Obviously, we tried the aggressive two stop but I think one stop in the end was probably more efficient strategy, but nobody knew that with certainty before the race. I think battery was not too bad in the race. I never was struggling with the battery level, to be honest.
“As for qualifying dip, I mean we have few ideas, few suspicions, two-three details, where we were just a little bit off, a little bit traffic also in Turn 9, which visually is always a pain in the arse there. It is these details, in the end, it is this two-tenths just to make it through to Q1, so yeah, it is down to that, if we had made it through I am sure we would have learned, correct few things on the set-up with the tools, you can clean it up, but this way unfortunately, it was game over.”
Here’s jump start from Nico Hulkenberg: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-hungarian-gp-hulkenberg-receives-penalty-after-jump-start.1839442639914432191
