The Sauber rookie had two costly crashes in front of his home crowd at Interlagos
To say that the Brazilian GP was a weekend of mixed emotions for new local Formula 1 hero Gabriel Bortoleto would be something of an understatement.
On the positive side he had a huge amount of support, as evidenced by the number of Sauber shirts in the crowd, and the reception he received when he was singled out for special treatment during the drivers’ parade, with his own car and interview slot.
On the downside he had a huge crash in the sprint race while racing Alex Albon, and trying to make up for it after missing qualifying, he crashed again on the first lap of the main race while battling Lance Stroll.
Given how few mistakes he’s made in his rookie year it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that he tried a little too hard to impress in front of his home crowd, and simply overdid it.
To his credit he readily admitted that he took too many risks, and that he has learned some lessons – not least to be a little more cautious in a sprint, given that his team lost the race to build up the spare car for him for main qualifying.
“First of all, I need to congratulate the team, because they rebuilt a car from zero, and they almost made it work for qualifying,” he said when I asked him about missing the session. “So that’s not easy. They did an amazing job.
“And from what happened from my side, I tried the first lap of the move on Alex, and I managed to succeed, but then he overtook me back with DRS. And then on the second lap, I think was a combination of things. I went for the move, I divebombed him again. And DRS was on.
“I braked probably a little bit in the wet patches, and ended up that the car pointed completely to the left in the wall, and after that, I was just a passenger. You cannot control it. Just terrible.”
A local journalist likened the incident to one in China, when Bortoleto was taken out by Jack Doohan in the sprint, and then suggested that it was avoidable given they were “fighting for P19.”
Having considered the comparison, and given that he and Albon were actually racing just outside the points, Bortoleto came up with a sensible and logical answer.
“I’ve been used to fight always in the front in my previous series, and now in F1, I don’t have quite there the car yet,” he said. “So I need to fight at some point. And the whole year, I think I’ve been backing out and not being able to fight.
“But I think I need to learn and to test things as well, because the day that I hopefully will get a car to fight for championships, I cannot make such mistakes. And I believe things like today create better drivers – like everyone did, if you see Max Verstappen at the beginning of his career.”
Regarding the Shanghai comparison he said: “And coming back to China, I think I was upset with Jack, yes, because he literally locked up everything and ended up hitting me. But we talked after, and it was fine. Obviously, in the moment I was very upset.
“Today I made the move the lap before that ended up quite well. We didn’t crash into each other. And today, I don’t know, it was wet, I hit the wall. It was not even Alex, I ended up in the wall.
“So I am sorry for him, because I saw my front wing ended up hitting his car. I don’t know if had damage from that or not. But life moves on, and I hope I will learn from my mistakes in the future as well.”
It was always going to be tough from P20 on the grid, and thus it was a useful bonus that with Verstappen and Esteban Ocon in the pitlane, he actually started from P18.
After a good getaway he passed the delayed Lewis Hamilton and Franco Colapinto before he came across Stroll – and found himself in the barrier for the second time.
At the time he blamed the Aston Martin driver, but having reviewed a replay, by the time I asked him about it he’d changed his mind.
“It was a good start,” he said. “I overtook two cars, Lewis and Colapinto in the outside of Turn 6. It was a nice move. And then Lance, I was just side-by-side with him out of Turn 9.
“There’s no pointing fingers here, just lap one, and I was in the outside, he opened a little bit more than than what there was space there. He clipped my front tyre, and I ended up in the wall. I think it’s a racing incident.
“Obviously, if he had given a bit more space, I would have done the corner, probably overtaken him because he had worse tyres than I had, because I was on soft. But again, it’s a racing incident, he didn’t do it on purpose, I’m sure. Every time I fight with him, he’s fair with me. So just racing.”
Bortoleto is a very smart guy, and despite the obvious frustration he was able to rationalise what had happened over the previous couple of days. He had no one else to blame.
“Yeah, a tough weekend,” he said. “We can forget and move on. I just take the positives that my whole country was here supporting me, the Brazilians, and just sad because I have not been able to race today and show a bit of the pace that I believe we had.
“It comes from me, from my incident in the sprint race that caused me not to do quali. So I’m going to be the first one harsh on myself here.
“I believe it’s a consequence of things that happened earlier in the weekend. But anyway, obviously it’s more painful because it’s my home race. But it’s just another weekend.
“We had so many good ones. We had bad ones as well, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I just need to move on, analyse things and learn from my mistakes and go for the next one.”
So what sort of lessons had he learned?
“I think just risk management, I think I’m happy that I’ve been trying to do different things this weekend, being more aggressive and trying things.
“But a sprint race, it’s probably not the best moment to try a risky thing when you can break your car and not do qualifying like I did. So that’s for sure learning.”
Adam Cooper F1 