The 2025 F1 São Paulo GP took a drastic turn for Brazilian born rookie and Sauber driver Gabriel Bortoleto, who was set to debut on his home soil as an F1 driver for the first time.
Bortoleto finished P5 during the sole practice session of the day and qualified 14th after sprint qualifying; however, he suffered a 57G crash during the sprint race, which caused severe damage to his car. Thankfully, he was left unharmed.
Problems resulted from Qualifying
Due to the nature of the crash, he was unable to participate in qualifying; Bortoleto was determined to make the most out of his weekend in front of his home crowd, but he suffered a second crash on Sunday’s race that resulted in a DNF.
After the race, the rookie was gutted with how his weekend unfolded, describing it as “one of the toughest weekends” of his entire career.
He expressed dismay over being unable to perform in front of his country, which gathered in grandstands to support him.
“Yeah, tough weekend to forget and move on. I just take the positive that my whole country was here supporting me, the Brazilians. And I’m just sad because I have not been able to race today and show a bit of the pace that I believe we had.”
The 21-year-old believes that his early onset of struggles stemmed from not being able to perform in qualifying, “It comes from me, from my incident in quali, in a sprint race that caused me not to do quali,” he explained.
“I’m going to be the first one harsh on myself here. I believe it’s a consequence of things that happened earlier in the weekend.“
Despite the challenges, Bortoleto tried to look at the learning experiences that he’s taking away from his weekend.
“It’s more painful because it’s my home race,” he said.
“But it’s just another weekend. We’ve had so many good ones and bad ones as well. There’s nothing I can do about it. I just need to move on, analyse things and learn from my mistakes and go for the next one.”
The collision that ended his race
During Lap 1 of the F1 São Paulo GP, Bortoleto successfully gained positions, passing Colapinto and Hamilton before his incident. “Yeah, it was a good start, it was nice,” he recalled. “I overtook two cars, Lewis and Colapinto, around the outside of Turn 6. It was a nice move.”
Incident with Lance Stroll
But moments later, his race drew to an early close, triggering the first yellow flag and safety car as a collision with Lance Stroll sent his car flying into the barriers before he could complete the opening lap.
After the race, the Sauber driver opened up regarding the incident and remained rational as he credited it as a racing incident.
“There’s no pointing fingers here,” he said. “He opened a little bit more than what there was of space there. He clipped my front tyre and I ended up in the wall. I think it’s a racing incident.”
In fact, he believed that if the circumstances were ideal, he could’ve overtaken the Aston Martin driver as he had a tyre advantage. The Canadian was on the hard compound that didn’t work well on the day.
“If he had given a bit more space, I probably would’ve overtaken him because he had worse tyres. I was on softs.”
Despite the result, Gabriel Bortoleto ensured not to lay any blame on the Aston Martin driver as he disregarded any ill intentions behind the move, claiming that Stroll always plays fair with him.
“But again, it’s a racing incident. He didn’t do it on purpose, I’m sure. Every time I fight with him, he’s fair with me. So, just racing.”
Rather than dwell on the disappointment, he stressed learning and moving forward. As the final three races of the season remain, Bortoleto shared his determination to make up for missed opportunities in Vegas and come back stronger than ever.
