Gabriel Bortoleto believes that he executed \u201cthe best race I could\u201d at the Austrian Grand Prix, but it still wasn\u2019t enough for Audi to return to the points as he just missed out in P11.<\/p>\n
Despite some promising performances, the team haven\u2019t finished in the top 10 since the season opener in Australia and were hopeful that their aerodynamic upgrades<\/a> would help them be more competitive at the Red Bull Ring<\/a>.<\/p>\n As one of just two drivers to start on the soft tyres \u2013 the other being Williams<\/a>\u2019s Carlos Sainz<\/a> \u2013 Bortoleto<\/a> gained a position from Pierre Gasly<\/a> before struggling to keep up with the Racing Bulls<\/a> pair, leaving him to settle for his third consecutive P11 finish.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is what it is,\u201d he said. \u201cI think I did the best race I could. I overtook the Alpine<\/a> that was ahead of me. We had really good race pace but I couldn\u2019t capitalise on P10 because I think the Racing Bulls were just a bit ahead of us this weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one broke down ahead of us \u2013 I think the last races have been a bit chaotic with these types of things, but this race was very clean for everyone. When I did a mega race, I think there was not really much [more] to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the wait for points continues, the Brazilian admitted he felt encouraged by how the updates to the car worked and was optimistic that Audi<\/a> will continue to improve, especially with further work on the power unit.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we did everything we could,\u201d Bortoleto added. \u201cI think our pace in Quali was quite decent. I think we brought an upgrade on the aero package that worked out, so pretty good, I would say.<\/p>\n \u201cI think everything we were trying to bring worked. We just need to catch up a little bit on the other side and we\u2019re going to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n His team mate Nico Hulkenberg<\/a>, who qualified P14 and also surged past Gasly to take P12, was similarly frustrated to not make enough progress to break into the points and admitted that an alternative strategy could\u2019ve been a better option.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously we went for a late first stop, trying to get a bit of a tyre delta for later in the race,\u201d he explained. \u201cUnfortunately then all the lapping happened, quite a few \u2013 six, seven, eight cars. Obviously then it\u2019s difficult to make progress.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anything, maybe we could\u2019ve stopped early and been a bit more aggressive, but I think you saw the pace. With the Racing Bulls, they were strong this weekend but on race pace, I think we were matching or slightly quicker. We didn\u2019t have the good starting position so it becomes difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough there\u2019s all these long straights, it\u2019s just difficult to follow cars at the exits. It\u2019s like someone has taken the front and rear wing off the car and you\u2019re just sat there with nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n With the teams and drivers preparing to switch focus to the British Grand Prix<\/a>, which takes place over the weekend of July 3-5, Hulkenberg expressed his excitement of racing at the circuit where he achieved his long-awaited maiden podium<\/a> last season.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI think we need a few more weekends to really learn and optimise. Silverstone is obviously a very different circuit \u2013 fast, flowing. I personally look forward to it \u2013 good memories from a year ago. [It\u2019s a] Sprint there so that\u2019s going to be interesting and spicy. I look forward to that and a bit of British weather too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gabriel Bortoleto believes that he executed \u201cthe best race I could\u201d at the Austrian Grand Prix, but it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-516417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}