Gabriel Bortoleto rates his rookie F1 season as a high, as he expands on his driving and also the team improving well throughout the year.
It didn’t start off that well for Sauber’s Bortoleto in his rookie F1 season. It was not straightforward bad but owing to the team’s results, he couldn’t show his potential of getting into Q3 and score points. His first breakthrough came in Austria and he followed it up in Belgium and Hungary.
In fact at Hungaroring, he registered his best result of sixth. As the car has improved, Bortoleto has managed to show his mettle on more occasions. He hasn’t surpassed teammate Nico Hulkenberg, but the Brazilian is slowly creeping into that position in terms of going neck and neck.
It should come with experience and Bortoleto isn’t shy to rate his own performance as high, even though he has done just the one season in F2. “It’s my rookie season, it’s normal that you progress,” he said. “At least for me, I’ve been always like this. If you check my junior series, I always have this type of steps in my career.
“Because I like to work, I like to study, I like to understand what I’ve been doing wrong and do a better job. It’s a boost. It’s a lot of confidence. It’s a lot of things for me, for the team. I was super satisfied, I couldn’t be more satisfied than Hungary because I think that was the real result we can achieve, more than if we get some luck or if someone crashes or something happen.
“I’m actually very happy with my rookie season so far, from where we started. It has been very tough at the beginning of the season with the car and being able to overcome those moments. And instead of losing confidence, I actually only gained confidence this year. So when you have a very tough car, I believe it’s very easy to, especially at the beginning of your career, want to lose confidence with the car and not push enough in the corners after, and then you start being slow and you don’t know why.
“That was not the case so far, I feel like I’ve only gained confidence, I’ve been only learning and learning every single round, so I would say this is a very good and positive thing, that’s why I rate my season quite highly so far. I have been able to score points already in Austria and then Belgium and Hungary and put some very good qualifyings as well.
“So I’m quite happy with it, obviously I want more and I’m aiming always for more. And let’s see how the season is, it’s still very long and many things to come. About F2, I would say so many things, so many people working in the F1 department, compared to the Formula 2 team, I would say being able to work with everyone and still give 100% on every single area, it’s my biggest learning,” summed up Bortoleto.
When asked what type of car he would like, Bortoleto straightaway prompted that he likes an oversteer car. But as a F1 driver, he reckons he has to adjust to every type what he is given. “I’m more of an oversteer guy, I would say,” he said. “Obviously you want a car that is perfect, good front, good rear stability, but it’s very rare that you can reach that exact thing in the car, because it will always change through the lap.
“But I feel like I get away a bit better with oversteer than understeer. But whatever you give to me, I need to drive. I’m a racing driver, I’m in Formula 1 and everyone here is capable of adapting and driving the car you have,” summed up Bortoleto, who hailed Sauber for the step made from the start of the season to now, which has helped him to show his mettle too.
“Obviously we started in a very difficult way, we had a car that was probably the worst car at the grid, we were really struggling all the races to go out of Q1 and in the race pace, we were very bad,” said Bortoleto. “And then we improved a lot, we brought some very good upgrades and now I think we are in a position that we are able to score points.
“Obviously it’s always super tight and it’s tough to score points, but at least we are fighting for it. So I would say we improved a lot through the season so far and the team has done an amazing job on that because it’s not easy to turn things around like we have done,” summed up Bortoleto.
Here’s Nico Hulkenberg on grim pre-season numbers to now
Here’s Jonathan Wheatley on teamwork
