Gabriel Bortoleto is fine with some Brazilian F1 fans not understanding why he is far back and not winning, as his focus is on improvements.
For fans from South America, it is always about passion. They get behind their native drivers with full enthusiasm, which is good and bad both. If you are at the front of the field, it serves well with victories and podiums, but if you are at the rear, it becomes a touch difficult o handle.
One of the prime examples is Franco Colapinto, who is finding it a touch difficult at Alpine. Likewise, Bortoleto faced similar results. Even though he showed his competitive face at times, the Brazilian couldn’t score points as Nico Hulkenberg until he did so in Austria.
He was sublime at Red Bull Ring and ended up eighth to register his first F1 points. With the rise of Sauber in performance, Bortoleto is slowly getting to show his mettle as other rookies like Isack Hadjar, Oliver Bearman and Andrea Kimi Antonelli. It is still not enough for him, certainly.
He understands how Brazilian fans are in general. He agrees that there are some who don’t understand the nature of F1 and why he is not winning, but for him, his focus is on race-by-race improvement. “Well, I think Brazil’s last driver was Massa, right? Eight years ago, something like this,” said Bortoleto to media. “And obviously, we are a country that won a lot in the sport back in the day.
“There’s a lot of fans that didn’t actually watch Brazilian drivers winning in Formula 1 because they are new fans—football fans that saw Brazil win 20 years ago – and they miss the feeling of winning in a sport again. Obviously, Brazil has not been successful in the football World Cup recently, and in motorsports, in the last years, in the sense of winning a title. Even if we do well, we don’t win a title.
“Brazilian fans are very emotional people—that’s Brazil. That’s what I love about my country as well. I think those that understand the sport and understand the difference between the cars, and that it’s a sport where you can actually develop a car—it’s not that everyone has the same chassis like in junior series where you just play with the set-up and make your car fast—those fans understand my situation right now.
“They just expect me to do better every race and improve with time and experience. But maybe some people that don’t understand much about F1 and they look at Senna back in the 1980s, they think you can get any car and win a race in Monaco in the wet. And it’s not like this these days anymore. It’s not that easy. Not saying it cannot happen, but this is okay.
“I don’t mind these comments. It’s okay for me. I do my best on track, and that’s what I care about,” summed up Bortoleto, who reflected on the first half of his rookie F1 season. The Brazilian feels he has made a step on qualifying pace already, and on the race side, he is slowly getting there by understanding different situations and learning from Nico Hulkenberg too.
“I think I’m a bit more confident and comfortable with the car on one lap,” continued Hulkenberg. “Since the beginning of the year, the pace has been there in a one lap. Since Australia, I already felt quite comfortable. Obviously, I’ve been evolving since then and understanding a bit better how the car works and what it needs to go faster, from my side as a driver and also from a set-up side.
“In the race, I have a very experienced teammate on my side. Sometimes I feel like he still has a wider vision of the race than I do in the moment—what is happening around him, the strategy he’s going for, or the way he’s pushing or not at the beginning of the race to save the tyres. Stuff like this. Things you get with experience. As a rookie, you learn. And you can only learn doing these mistakes sometimes.
“I feel like Nico has been doing a very good job in the races on that side, also positioning himself in good ways in lap one. We are always starting very close to each other, but somehow these two positions make a big difference in the big picture of the race. So, yeah. So far, I’m quite happy. I feel like I’m extracting quite a lot of it in a one lap, as I said, and now we are making the jump in the right direction for the race pace,” summed up Bortoleto.
Here’s Jonathan Wheatley on Nico Hulkenberg’s podium
Here’s Sauber undertaking Pirelli test
Here’s Nico Hulkenberg on podium