Gabriel Bortoleto expands on his sim work and how it has helped him knowing tracks like Montreal and China, while Nico Hulkenberg shares the other view.
Sauber’ Bortoleto is the new kid in town who is a fan of sim racing. He has followed the footsteps of Max Verstappen, with whom is now good friends. The Brazilian is often seen playing with the Dutchman and his crew, whether it is racing games and or fighting.
Bortoleto feels the current generation of drivers will pay more attention to sim racing and in 10-15 years, there won’t be any driver left who won’t have sim background. He is not sure if there will be sim to higher class of competitive racing, but sim racers in real racing will increase.
He recalls doing nearly 500 laps on sim while in competition with his friends, which excludes 90 odd laps on team’s simulator to learn a new circuit. It came handy in China and Canada, where when he had his first run in FP1, he already felt to have done good number of laps and it needed less laps to adjust.
But he is different to how Hulkenberg operates. Bortoleto revealed talks with the German, which highlighted different lifestyles. The experienced campaigner noted that he doesn’t fancy the home sim as much because he hasn’t clicked much when he tried with Playstation and XBOX.
He doesn’t feel less prepared as he is fine with the number of laps done on team’s simulator. Bortoleto clarified that having sim run doesn’t mean one is more prepared. He took the example of Charles Leclerc, who he feels is quick even though he doesn’t do home sim.
Hulkenberg, also, talked about his first run on the simulator trying the 2026 F1 car. The German could sense differences in driving and handling, but didn’t wish to elaborate much considering it is early days, which will lead to undue assumptions about how the car will be.
Growth of sim –
Bortoleto: “Yeah, I think definitely sim in 10-15 years will be something that I don’t think will be something that people can skip very easily. I think the new generation of drivers coming from go-karts now, probably all of them already have a sim at home and they have been growing up doing this type of things. Yeah, I think there will be more drivers in the future doing that. It’s very different at the same time.
“If a driver never did real life racing and only coming from the sim background and doing real life, it’s not that easy. It’s not everyone that is able to do that. But at least there is a possibility now. It’s better than not doing anything and then suddenly at 20 years old you try to do real racing and you crash the car, you spend millions and you are not able to do it anymore.”
More help against drivers who don’t do sim in prep –
Bortoleto: “No, I think it definitely helps, but we see examples like in Charles for example. I’m talking about home sim, ok? I don’t think there is any driver in Formula 1 that…there is definitely drivers that do less in the team and more, but everyone does a bit of preparation. But I think home sim, there is not many that do actually a lot, like I do, like Max does. You see Leclerc is very quick for example, and I don’t see him doing any home sim. So yeah, it’s definitely something that helps me a lot. And when I go to the sim in the team I feel much more prepared.
“And I lose much less time when I jump in that sim. I already know what to do, what I need to focus on and things. It’s definitely an extra preparation for me. I do everything, but mainly F1, because I actually enjoy doing it a lot. I have friends that are very quick in the sim, so we try to hotlap each other, battle and do some nice racing. But I also do like GT3 stuff, hypercar, sometimes rally, just whatever. I don’t do anything during the day, so I just want to do something and I drive the sim.”
What can you do on sim to prepare, help this year –
Bortoleto: “I mean setup is quite difficult to simulate very well, but definitely there are very good tracks that are made in the sim, that are very similar to real life, and if you get well these tracks and you work on them. I have friends that do some track works for me, so if I need a curb to be a bit different here or there, a bump that doesn’t have in the sim and I want to add stuff like this and we fine tune it, we make it realistic.
“And you just drive, and when you hit the track in real life, instead of hitting a track that you don’t drive for a year, like other drivers did last year, I probably feel like I’ve been here already in the past and it’s going to be my first time. Stuff like this, and I already felt it like this for example in Montreal, I had a very good feeling in a new track, China, I did so much sim that when I hit the track for the first time I felt that I was there already in the past, and I’ve never been there before, so it’s this type of things.”
Hours put in –
Bortoleto: “It’s difficult to judge hours, I mean I spend days and days doing it, so to count the hours is complicated, but ok, during the day, if I take it from midday, 1pm, just after lunch, and then you spend the whole day driving, you do a quick stop, have a break, play other games, and come back at the end of the day, you finish 10-11pm, and you have been doing the whole day sim and other days through the time. So you spend, I don’t know, 7-8 hours, but doing a lot of things. Maybe at this track I did in the sim at home 400-500 laps, 400 laps I would say. In the team, you do one day of full prep, so probably 80-90 laps, something like this.
“Yeah, quite a lot of laps. But it’s different things, you know, at home you are driving with friends, and then you are racing, and then you don’t even realise, but you did so many laps, and then they put a good lap time, and then you need to beat that lap time, because you are competitive, and things like this. And then you keep doing it, and when you check the amount of laps you have done, you are like, ‘oh my god, I have done a lot of laps’. But in the sim of the team, for example, you can work a lot of setup, so it’s a lot about, it’s not about lap time, but it’s about testing things, and things, and things after things.”
Hulkenberg query –
Bortoleto: “He does, to be honest, he asked me what do you do during the day, and ‘I’m like, I’m in the sim the whole day’. How is this possible? I said, ‘what do you do during the day? I spend time with my kid, I go for a coffee, and I’m like, how do you do this?’ For me, it’s a different generation as well, he does a lot of sim work in the team as well, but at home he doesn’t have a sim.
“It’s just lifestyle, different, he has a kid, he has a daughter to take care of, a wife, he has his life. I don’t have any of this, I have a girlfriend, but she doesn’t live with me. What do I do if I go to the gym? Ok, but you don’t spend 12 hours in the gym, you need to wake up, you go to the gym, when you come back you need to do something, that’s the only thing I find to do.”
Why no sim –
Hulkenberg: “I think it’s a mix of different reasons, obviously a completely different generation. When I was a teenager, I sometimes had a Playstation or Xbox, but I never really fell in love with it. It never really clicked for me, it was never a love story. So I did bids in and out, but never crazy about it. And I think it’s very personal, some people really like doing it, like Max and him for example. They love it, they live for it, which is also good. I think for them it really does something and helps and somehow trains them more. But for me it just never clicked.”
Less prepared –
Hulkenberg: “No, I mean we do the sim stuff in Hinwil from the team simulator. So I don’t feel unprepared coming here, not at all.”
2026 work –
Hulkenberg: “We’ve only just started. It’s still early days. We’ve had a first taste, first touch with it. So yeah, work in progress. Look, for me it is a bit different. But it’s still a race car at the end of the day, achieved in slightly different ways. But also I think it’s too early to take this as the real reference. I think what we have there now is not going to be the real thing come March. So yeah, I don’t know. I think we still need to wait and be a bit careful with too early assumptions or statements about that. I guess the combination of the two [energy and recharge scene] is different, quite different.”
Here’s Nico Hulkenberg on Singapore GP
