While his fellow 2025 Formula 1 rookies Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar have been in the spotlight Gabriel Bortoleto has been making quiet progress at Sauber.
He’s been overshadowed of late by strong race performances from team mate Nico Hulkenberg, but he has outqualified the German on several occasions, and he did so again in Austria.
Helped by another round of updates the Brazilian was quick from the start of the weekend at a track where he’d been successful in the junior categories.
Eighth in FP2 and 10th in FP3 suggested that he had a real shot at his first Q3 appearance, and he duly went through the three qualifying sessions in P8, P5 and P8.
On a day when Hulkenberg made a mistake and ended Q1 in 20th and last position it was a standout performance from the F3/F2 champion.
“I feel like the track is very special for me,” he said when I asked what had clicked for him. “But for sure I’m getting more and more experience with the car and the team and the series.
“It’s just the beginning. Is not even half of the season. I’ve been working very hard on understanding what I need from my side, from the car, and I feel like I’m getting more and more comfortable with it, and that I know what I need before even the weekend starts.
“And I feel like it’s the first weekend that I am that comfortable since FP1. And it feels like things are clicking for me, and I’m going in the right direction.”
What impressed was the way he was strong over all three qualifying sessions, rather than fading to P10 having made Q3.
“Well, it’s very promising, and hopefully we can achieve this type of qualifying every single time,” he said. “Obviously, it’s not easy.
“I feel like it’s a track that has been positive for the car and for me, but yeah, there’s a lot of to work still, and it’s not that we are comfortable in Q3 it has been a very tight quality and I’ve been putting some good laps together.
“The car was spot-on as well. And let’s see, let’s see how we go on to the end of the season.
“I feel like I’m getting more confident with the car, but not only from the upgrades, but also myself on understanding. At the beginning of the season, when you jump in the car, it’s basically a different feeling.
“It’s like every single FP1 is, you don’t know how the car is going to behave. But then when you get used to the car, more and more, you start putting it in the limits earlier in the weekend, and you work on more in yourself, on the driving and the setup. And I feel like we have been going in this direction this weekend.”
The target now has to be his points of the season. He’s got Ma Verstappen in front of him, and Kimi Antonelli in a potentially quicker Mercedes behind, so he’s going to have to pick his fights.
“It doesn’t change so much my approach in the start. I’m going to try to do the best start possible gain some positions. If I cannot gain, I’m going to try to keep there, and try to make the best race pace I can score points tomorrow.
“Obviously, it makes no sense fighting with people you cannot stay ahead of. But for sure, I’m a racer, I’m going to try to gain the positions early in the race and see what happens.
“But I’m not going to be focusing on overtaking people that I know probably have better pace than me, like Verstappen, because you probably just destroy your tyres doing this. So we need to focus racing with people that we actually know we can.”
Adam Cooper F1 