Gabriel Bortoleto joining Sauber marks the start of a new era for the Swiss Formula 1 team, who is the young charge that will partner Nico Hulkenberg at Sauber in 2025?
The news that Bortoleto will take to the grid in 2025 will come as no surprise to those following F1’s silly season in 2024, he has been linked to an F1 seat for a few months now.
He is one of the most highly respected and talented junior racing drivers in the world, and his exploits in F2 have not gone unnoticed by those in the F1 paddock as he battles for the title.
Currently signed to the McLaren Young Driver programme, Sauber will have had to pay a handsome sum to secure the Brazilian’s services as he prepares for his first venture into F1.
Sauber opting to take the financial penalty makes sense, he has enjoyed a strong campaign in F2 this season and leads the championship as the series prepares for its final two rounds of the year.
When looking at his career, Bortoleto is an attractive prospect with the potential to help transform Sauber’s terrible fortunes in recent seasons thanks to his undeniable and proven talent.
A stand out junior career
Bortoleto has enjoyed a strong junior career, graduating to car racing in 2020, when he debuted in Italian F4 with Prema, scoring a win in his first season en route to fifth place in the championship.
Fernando Alonso took an interest, immediately bringing Bortoleto into his driver mentoring company A14 Management, which the Brazilian said was “life-changing“.
The two-time World Champion placed him into his Formula Regional European Championship Team, scoring 44 points in his tenure in what was a training year.
From there, he moved to F3 for 2023, racing with Trident, where he immediately began to make an impact, but he had to endure a rocky and incident-filled start in high-profile, elite motorsport.
A clumsy collision with Rafael Villagómez was not the best of starts to his time in the series, but he rectified this the next day with a feature race victory inherited after a penalty for the race leader. This proved to be a statement of intent for a year ahead.
Given its 30-car field, F3 can be a daunting place to achieve regular wins, but Bortoleto took two wins, as well as six podiums en route to a fairly easy driver’s title in his first year in the series.
This phenomenal achievement attracted the attention of McLaren, who signed him to their driver development programme, while he also graduated to F2 in 2024, driving for Invicta Racing.
His year in F2 has been equally as impressive, taking two victories and and three second place finishes so far this season. His consistency has given him the lead of the championship with just two rounds remaining.
It is the nature of his F2 wins that have impressed many in the F1 paddock.
His Feature Race win at Monza rivalled that of Max Verstappen’s F1 win in Brazil, taking the win on the last lap after starting at the back.
Should Bortoleto achieve the F2 title, it would match Oscar Piastri’s back-to-back F3 and F2 titles in 2020 and 2021, the only driver so far to reach this milestone. He would also become the first F2 title holder to graduate to F1 since George Russell in 2018.
Can Bortoleto make a difference in F1?
It is impossible to judge a rookie until after they have made their debut, but Bortoleto will feel significant pressure when he arrives in the F1 paddock to deliver results quickly.
Racing against multiple rookies in 2025, he will need to prove himself alongside the likes of Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Jack Doohan, who have attracted equal hype over their promotion.
As Brazil’s first F1 driver since Felipe Massa left in 2017, he has huge shoes to fill as he aims to emulate his fellow countrymen like Ayrton Senna and Rubens Barrichello. This will only add to the pressure.
But after such strong campaigns in F3 and F2, the young Brazilian has the potential to perform well in F1, his seat will mask performances in the short term however.
As seen with Zhou Guanyu, a more than capable driver, the Sauber seat can destroy confidence and risk creating a spiral of underperformance, a potential disaster for Bortoleto’s rookie year.
But the biggest test for the Brazilian will arguably come outside the car, as Sauber seeks to turn around a disastrous run of form that looks set to result in a point-less season in 2024.
As the team prepares to become Audi in 2026, its mechanics and leadership will be looking to him for guidance and direction in setting up his car, a factor that mentor Alonso will likely be assisting him with.
The perils of moving to F1 are well-known to junior drivers, but Bortoleto feels like the most exciting rookie prospect in some time, which is telling after a period of F2 champions waiting on the sidelines.
READ MORE – Sauber announces Gabriel Bortoleto to complete 2025 F1 line-up
