Qualifying<\/a>, leaving him to start the race from last place on the grid.<\/p>\nAt lights out, Bortoleto reacted well and recovered some positions before Lance Stroll tapped his car and sent him into the barriers once again, marking a very early and heartbreaking end to the 21-year-old\u2019s home race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just very upset because it\u2019s my first home race so you always expect to do a good job, or at least race a little bit,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it has been one of the toughest weekends of my whole career because I see that my fans are here, my family, my team.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor them, it\u2019s also very important and it was one of the biggest accidents I\u2019ve had in my career \u2013 probably the biggest one. I think it\u2019s a combination of things, and then not doing a single lap in the race after having a good start\u2026 until that moment, I think I was up two positions already.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going for the third move and just had contact with Lance. I don\u2019t want to point fingers here or there. I just think it was a racing incident. On the first lap, everything can happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think obviously I was on the outside and didn\u2019t get any space from him, but it was also difficult for him to judge that I\u2019m there. I just want to move on and go for the next race.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Bortoleto complained over the radio that the Aston Martin driver \u201cturned into the corner like I wasn\u2019t there\u201d, a Safety Car was called to recover his car. His family were also shown with disappointed looks on the broadcast, demonstrating the emotions felt by hordes of his fans.<\/p>\n
Supporters held up signs and ‘tifos’ of Bortoleto around the circuit throughout the weekend and were vocal in their admiration for him despite the unfortunate results.<\/p>\n
Asked whether he had a message for his fans, he replied: \u201cThank you. Even throughout the difficult moments of this weekend, they have been there supporting, cheering, screaming my name and being there. I cannot thank them enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just incredible to see my country so happy to have someone. I hope I make them proud soon because on weekends like this, no one is happy. Thank you everyone \u2013 every single Brazilian there, and everyone in the world watching and supporting me this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gabriel Bortoleto\u2019s high expectations for his first Formula 1 home event were crushed as he suffered a DNF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-278535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}