Gabriel Bortoleto has impressed in his debut season and achieved a tie in the qualifying duel against Nico Hülkenberg – but why he is still not satisfied
Gabriel Bortoleto made his Formula 1 debut in 2025 and made a strong impression. The 21-year-old Brazilian joined Sauber alongside an experienced teammate: Nico Hülkenberg. “He has been considered one of the best qualifiers in the paddock for years,” recalls Bortoleto.
“When I moved up this season, I thought, ‘Damn, it’s going to be tough against him. He’s extremely fast.’” This makes the intra-team duel between the two Sauber drivers, which even ended in a tie in qualifying, all the more surprising.
“It was definitely a very exciting season, especially in comparison to Nico, because it’s always fun to fight so directly against him,” grins the young Brazilian, who doesn’t want to let the fame of Formula 1 change him. “This season of comparison with him was just incredible.”
In his very first race, the 2025 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, Bortoleto made it through to the second part of qualifying, while Hülkenberg was eliminated early on. The German failed to make it through Q1 on several occasions after that as well.
Bortoleto unlucky in qualifying at the end of the season
It was only towards the end of the season that Hülkenberg regularly scraped into the top 10 again. “He’s definitely doing a better job than at the start of the season,” praised Bortoleto. “I remember that he almost always got eliminated in Q1, and now he consistently makes it into Q2 and Q3.”
Instead, it was Bortoleto who was eliminated several times in Q1. “But there were a few of the last six races that were completely out of my control,” emphasized the Sauber driver. “There really wasn’t much I could do: yellow flags here and there, or some other situation that happened.”
“I don’t want to go into too much detail, but for many reasons, they weren’t clean races,” admits the 21-year-old. “There were also races where I simply didn’t perform well enough in qualifying. In the summer, I felt like I did every single qualifying session perfectly, drove good laps, and reached Q3 after Q3.”
In Hungary, Bortoleto finished seventh on the grid, and in the races in Spielberg and Monza, he finished eighth. “I just want to get back into that rhythm,” said the Brazilian before the winter break. “Of course, there were also new tracks for me, which automatically puts you in learning situations.”
Bortoleto: Learned the most in Vegas qualifying
Las Vegas was a perfect example of this: “It was the first time I had ever driven in wet qualifying. I didn’t drive on intermediates in FP3, but went straight into qualifying in wet conditions. Everything was new to me: How many laps should I drive? Cool down, or not?“
”I think it showed many aspects of my limited experience,“ admits rookie Bortoleto, ”including what we could have done better as a team to be more successful in qualifying, where we can improve, what information I could have gotten.”
“I think it’s great because we learned so much in this qualifying session,” says the rookie, who ultimately secured 17th place on the grid. “The result wasn’t what we expected, but the learning curve was huge. It was probably the qualifying session from which we learned the most this season.”
In his second Formula 1 season, he will no longer be unfamiliar with the tracks and working with the team, which “should hopefully help him find that rhythm again,” says this year’s Audi driver. In any case, Bortoleto no longer has to hide from his teammate Nico Hülkenberg.