{"id":850057,"date":"2026-08-10T08:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T08:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/850057\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T08:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T08:44:14","slug":"gabriel-bortoleto-claims-drivers-should-adapt-amid-complaints-about-2026-formula-1-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/850057\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabriel Bortoleto claims drivers should adapt amid complaints about 2026 Formula 1 cars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audi driver Gabriel Bortoleto rubbished claims that the 2026 Formula 1<\/a> cars affect the driving styles of drivers insisting they should be able to adapt to the machinery at their disposal.The 2026 Formula 1 cars have attracted heavy criticism due to their 50-50 power output split between internal combustion and electricity with drivers have to drive unnaturally always wary of sudden changes in their self-learning power units’<\/a> performances and power delivery.<\/p>\n

But Bortoleto, who drives for Audi, the company that basically is the cause of this power unit fiasco, has a different view, unsurprisingly.<\/p>\n

He said:\u00a0\u201cI don’t think I changed much my way of driving. But again, I don’t like the sentence \u2018driving style\u2019, because I don’t believe that a Formula 1 driver should ever say that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be able to adapt, even if it’s not natural maybe, but we should be able to adapt to any type of car and the way you need to drive, that’s why we do what we do and that’s why we are the 22 drivers in the world doing Formula 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s just a matter of what car you have and how you need to drive them. I think from last year I didn’t change much the way to drive, but obviously you fine-tune a bit here and there, you know how the energy deploys out of some corners, so you know if you can push more the entry and you care about less on the exit, because there is no energy being deployed there.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr if you actually need to be a bit more careful on the entry, because there is going to be a long straight and a lot of energy being deployed, so you need to change, like last year was always constant, so you didn’t have to do so,” the Brazilian explained.<\/p>\n

The cream rises to the top\"Verstappen-Hamilton-Canada-2-2026\"\/<\/p>\n

And to support his claim, Bortoleto pointed at Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, and other top drivers who are still competitive with the new cars.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cDo you see Verstappen being slow? Do you see a seven-time world champion [Hamilton] being slow this year? Do you see [Charles] Leclerc being slow? I don’t see them being slow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still see them very competitive, so I wouldn’t say fast drivers are slow actually. Lewis is a bit better than he was doing last year; Max is still performing like crazy, putting that car on the top; Lando, the world champion, the reigning world champion, he’s still quick.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s the truth, so I don’t think we have seen slow drivers last year becoming quick and the quick guys slow, I think it’s still racing,” Borteleto concluded.<\/p>\n

While his statement is valid regarding great drivers being able to extract performance from the new cars’ power units, that does not mean the situation of Formula 1 any better.<\/p>\n

The new power units remain anti-racing as Verstappen said earlier while many who criticized him have now joined him in his stance, but one cannot blame Bortoleto as he has to say what benefits his paymasters, Audi, the manufacturer for whom the current rules have been basically produced due to Formula 1’s relentless efforts to attract car manufacturers without any consideration to the sport’s identity or interest. (Reporting by Agnes Carlier)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audi driver Gabriel Bortoleto rubbished claims that the 2026 Formula 1 cars affect the driving styles of drivers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,226253,63,817,114858,35119,813,816,7695,85],"class_list":["post-850057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-audi-revolut-f1-team","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-f1-2026-regulations","tag-f1-news","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-gabriel-bortoleto","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850057","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=850057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}