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How Bortoleto rose to the top of F1’s rookie field

Fernando Alonso doesn’t shy away from complaining about perceived slights, some fair but others imagined. His recent barb, that Gabriel Bortoleto’s performances for Sauber in 2025 are overlooked, falls into the latter category. His claim that Bortoleto is “the best rookie of this generation” is up for debate, although he’s certainly making an impact, but the suggestion that “if he were English or something like that and finished sixth in a Sauber, he’d be on the front page of every newspaper” yet nobody is talking about him is wide of the mark. The fact is, Bortoleto is getting headlines – and rightly so. 

Alonso is not impartial when it comes to Bortoleto, who joined his A14 Management stable in September 2022. That deal set Bortoleto on the path to Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles in consecutive seasons ahead of his graduation to F1 with Sauber this year. Alonso would have had a point about Bortoleto being neglected had he made it two months ago, but recent performances have made him unignorable. For those paying close attention, his quality was clear early on, but it’s only since Sauber’s recent upturn in form that he’s had the results to prove it. 

Bortoleto started 2025 as a supporting player in the star cast of rookies. Kimi Antonelli, regarded as a Verstappen-in-the-making by Mercedes, shared top billing with Ferrari junior Ollie Bearman at Haas. Even Isack Hadjar, reluctantly promoted to F1 by Red Bull, bounced back from crashing on the formation lap of his grand prix debut to be hailed as top newcomer. The uncertainty around his Alpine future even kept Jack Doohan in the headlines early on. Bortoleto, meanwhile, was easily forgotten.

The 20-year-old Brazilian’s first 10 grand prix weekends yielded no points finishes and a best grid position of 12th. Yet there were positive signs, as his qualifying performances stacked up well compared to veteran teammate Nico Hulkenberg. His races were, as you’d expect, more erratic but that was as much down to the difficult-to-drive Sauber C45 that suffered from aerodynamic instability. A floor upgrade for the ninth race of the season in Spain changed all that.

“I feel like since we brought the first upgrades [in Spain], the car is changing the balance through the corner a bit less,” says Bortoleto. “Sometimes before, I was approaching the corner in a certain way and the car was not behaving how I wanted it to behave.

“Or when we were following in dirty air, it was super-sensitive sometimes. In China, I spun just because I crossed the dirty air of Bearman. We were fighting and then at some point he crosses in front of me and I completely lost downforce and spun. So that’s something that we did definitely need to improve on during this season.”

Turbulent air is a universal truth in F1, but the Sauber suffered from that more than most with a car that was even peaky and unpredictable in clear air. During the first eight events of the season, the Sauber was capable of reaching Q2 if the drivers nailed it in the first segment of qualifying, but doing so was particularly challenging thanks to those characteristics. Bortoleto reached Q2 three times, plus in both of the sprint sessions in China and Miami. 

Those early races were a mixed bag in a car that tended to perform worse on a long run. Bortoleto crashed in Australia and collided with Kimi Antonelli on the first lap at Monaco, but flirted with a points finish at Imola but was thwarted by a pitstop shortly before a VSC that set him on a path to finishing l ast. In Bahrain, he struggled for confidence and in managing tire degradation, while in Miami he had a good run in the grand prix before an engine problem put him out. This, remember, was in a phase of the season when the Sauber was, on balance, the weakest car and didn’t give either driver the confidence to push. The team’s sole points finish was Hulkenberg’s seventh in Australia, which was only possible thanks to a perfectly-timed switch to intermediates. This meant that while Bortoleto had shown plenty of flashes of form, he’d yet to string together a weekend that made the wider world aware of his qualities.

That started to change in Spain. He exhibited his adaptability by running the old floor on Friday as Sauber completed a rigorous back-to-back test for its upgrade package, but from the moment it was bolted onto his car for FP3 on Saturday he gelled with it. He promptly outqualified his team-mate, then after Hulkenberg got ahead at the start Bortoleto ran with him before being left to run long. While Hulkenberg surged to fifth place after a late safety car let him bolt on fresh softs, Bortoleto finished 12

th when he could easily have been right up there with his teammate. Again, it was clear to those paying close attention that Bortoleto had strung together a strong weekend that once again wasn’t rewarded with points.

Austria was a breakout weekend for Bortoleto, and he added another two point-scoring finishes before the summer break. Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images

A tricky weekend followed in Montreal, although he immediately recognized his error in qualifying of under-driving in Q1 before a race in which he struggled with the tires. Then came the breakthrough in Austria. He qualified eighth and finished seventh behind Alonso using a car with another step in floor development. He knew he should have beaten his mentor, again showing his capacity for recognizing where he needs to improve.

“I’ve made a mistake from my side in that I went for a move in Turn 3 and then he got DRS,” said Bortoleto. “If I maybe waited a bit just before hitting the [detection] line and getting the DRS on exit, probably I would have got him. That was a key moment because you have only one or two laps to make a move because it was the end of the race. When I went for the move, he slowed down and I tried to slow down as well, but wI as already committed and couldn’t stop before the [detection] line. That was a moment he played very smart and managed to overtake me back.”

There, Bortoleto’s willingness to accept he was out-thought showcases he’s very much an old head on young shoulders – he’s 20 going on 40. That’s encouraging as it allows him to analyze his own performances objectively and not be blinded by grasping for excuses or self-justification. This quality is clear in everything he says about himself, talking of the desire to emerge as the strongest all-round driver he can be. There, you sense some of Alonso’s influence, combined with the fact that Bortoleto shares the double world champion’s razor-sharp competitive edge. He even has a hint of Alonso’s off-track combativity, as if he senses any unfairness implicit in a question he will firmly, but politely, push back and make himself heard. Those qualities stand him in good stead.

He’s also shown the ability to bounce back from disaster. The following race at Silverstone was a nightmare, spinning at Becketts in FP3 and damaging the floor. That forced him to qualify on the pre-Austria specification, beating Hulkenberg before spinning and tagging the barrier at Abbey after switching to slicks in the wet at the end of the formation lap. Again, that was a chance for introspection. He later said of the tire decision “when you are a rookie, you always want to do something a bit different”. In mitigation, while two of his fellow rookies, Bearman and Hadjar, made the same misjudgement, so too did George Russell and Charles Leclerc, two of the best in the business. Yet he followed this up with two outstanding weekends in the back-to-back events in Belgium and Hungary.

At Spa, he qualified 10th and finished ninth in both the sprint and the main event. Although only worth points in the latter, it was an outstanding performance. Then came Hungary, where he qualified eighth and finished seventh, ahead of Lance Stroll in a faster Aston Martin after getting ahead at the start. Benefiting from another Sauber floor upgrade, he extracted everything from the package in both events. His reward is, at last, the attention he deserves from the watching world.  

One thing Alonso regularly reminds everyone of, with some justification, is that Bortoleto’s preparation for coming into F1 was very limited in terms of TPC (testing of previous cars) running. It left him well behind the likes of Antonelli, who completed a comprehensive test program last year, and Bearman, who raced three times in 2024, in terms of F1 mileage. Bortoleto is a fast learner and an adaptable driver, one who tends toward a more attacking corner-entry style than Hulkenberg but not universally so. He recognizes the need to modify the approach depending on the corner type and conditions, something that’s critical in these tricky ground-effect F1 cars. Interestingly, he has also hinted that some of that adaptability is drawn from his love of sim racing, which he suggests might make it possible for drivers to develop greater tolerance for rear instability – a key trait given that can make a car very quick, provided you can control it.

He also has all the hallmarks of a driver who gets better as they climb the ladder. Although he caught the eye in karting and in his early steps in single-seaters, it wasn’t until F3 and F2 that he started to rack up titles. Signed by McLaren during his victorious F3 campaign in 2023, he made a positive impression on the team, but with title rivals Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in for the long haul he had to seek an F1 opportunity elsewhere. Sauber was the only port available in his particular storm, and despite the long-term appeal of its transformation into Audi, there was the very real risk that his whole season might have looked like the early stages – genuine promise hidden by an erratic car. Fortunately, Sauber’s impressive development progress has saved him from such undeserved reputational damage.

Bortoleto is still on a steep learning curve and with three points finishes in the last four races he’s trending to be a consistent scorer in the back end of the season. He’s demonstrated adaptability, intelligence and determination, as well as speed that means he has a bright future in F1. There were signs of that early in the season, but now the improvement of the machinery has made that very clear to everyone. Yes, Fernando, even the English-speaking media has noticed how good your protégé is…