{"id":71083,"date":"2025-08-15T07:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T07:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/71083\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T07:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T07:38:07","slug":"2025-formula-1-mid-season-driver-rankings-12-gabriel-bortoleto-%c2%b7-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/71083\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 Formula 1 mid-season driver rankings #12: Gabriel Bortoleto \u00b7 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gabriel Bortoleto<\/a> arrived in Formula 1 after winning back-to-back Formula 3 and Formula 2 championships. Expectations of his performance were therefore set at the level of the F1 race-winners who pulled off that feat before him: Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Oscar Piastri.<\/p>\n

Joining the team which finished last in the 2024 championship inevitably meant those expectations had to be tempered somewhat. But despite his shortage of points so far, there\u2019s been a lot to like about Bortoleto\u2019s performances. As with all drivers, his ranking here does not take his level of experience into account.<\/p>\n

Bortoleto\u2019s most obvious strength has been his consistently strong single-lap pace which has allowed him to regularly eclipse his highly experienced team mate Nico Hulkenberg<\/a>. The newcomer qualified ahead at the opening round and has done so regularly since then, or else lapped just a few hundredths of a second shy of his team mate. He was especially impressive at Miami, an unfamiliar circuit which was also a sprint race weekend.<\/p>\n

However it\u2019s fair to say Bortoleto hasn\u2019t capitalised on his starting positions as successfully as his team mate did in races like Spain or Britain. Bortoleto lined up ahead of Hulkenberg in the former but started poorly and slipped back in the race. While Hulkenberg romped to the Silverstone podium, Bortoleto bravely gambled on slick tyres at the start but crashed out on the wet track.<\/p>\n

Gabriel Bortoleto<\/p>\n

Best
\nWorst<\/p>\n

GP start
\n7
\n20<\/p>\n

GP finish
\n6
\n19<\/p>\n

Points
\n14<\/p>\n

Early in the season, when the Sauber was less competitive, Bortoleto appeared to be over-driving somewhat at times, spinning at the start of the race in Shanghai and again in qualifying at Jeddah. For much of the first part of the season his race pace was not as strong as Hulkenberg\u2019s, who was often able to rebound from his team mate out-qualifying him by getting ahead on race day.<\/p>\n

But that started to change as Sauber\u2019s upgrades began to pay off. Bortoleto finally claimed his first points finish with an excellent weekend-long performance in Austria. He deserved to finish higher than eighth, but fell behind drivers who made one fewer pit stop than he did.<\/p>\n

He rebounded from his Silverstone disappointment in fine style, delivering ninth at Spa and a best-yet result of sixth at the Hungaroring after out-qualifying no less a rival than Max Verstappen<\/a>. Having shown a good measure of potential he is beginning to deliver on it. In a better car he would surely be getting better results and more plaudits. <\/p>\n

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Formula 1
\nBrowse all Formula 1 articles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gabriel Bortoleto arrived in Formula 1 after winning back-to-back Formula 3 and Formula 2 championships. Expectations of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,3031,82],"class_list":["post-71083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-gabriel-bortoleto","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}