MIAMI, Florida — The 2025 Formula 1 season has several rookies adjusting to life at the pinnacle of motorsport.
Among those is Gabriel Bortoleto. Last season’s Formula 2 Drivers’ Champion is now five races into his rookie campaign, driving for Sauber. He has yet to open his account, with his best finish coming at the Chinese Grand Prix when he finished 14th. But speaking with the media Thursday ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, Bortoleto made it clear what he needs to do on the track.
Find the perfect lap.
“I will not change anything in the approach, just trying to do my best and you know, maximizing the laps,” said Bortoleto to the media, including SB Nation, Thursday at Hard Rock Stadium.
“Last two races, to be honest, I’ve not done a clean lap. In Jeddah, you know, a bit unlucky as well with the plastic bag in the middle of the track. I avoided it thinking it was a front wing or something, and yeah, just lost my laps.
“And in Bahrain, it was my mistake there.
“I had a snap out of T1 and that cost me maybe going to Q2 in that quali,” continued Bortoleto. “Because still with that lap we were super close to go to Q2 and we lost a lot.
“So yeah, it’s just about putting the lap together, I would say, get the lap on board. The approach is the same.”
Bortoleto also stressed that the need for the perfect lap at Sauber is more critical than it is for other teams. While some of the other drivers have a larger error band, at Sauber the window is much tighter, and therefore the need for the perfect lap is increased.
“We always target to go to Q2,” began Bortoleto. “That’s something for us, if we’ve reached Q2 it’s already a positive.
“We have less chances than other teams. Sometimes, you know, the top teams, they can just drive around and go to Q2, Q3.”
Balancing the search for the perfect lap, and avoiding a mistake, is one of the issues Bortoleto and Sauber are balancing this season.
“We need to do very good laps to try to extract everything and sometimes trying to do these very good laps, you end up doing mistakes, but that’s where a driver can fail,” continued the rookie driver. “You know, when you try too hard, you can make mistakes and that’s when you need to understand that you are doing that and not overdrive it, just calm down and put the laps together. And I think that has been a little bit the last weekend and it’s about putting the lap together now and trying to, so you need to build up and get the confidence with the track.”
As far as Bortoleto’s expectations going into the weekend, the rookie driver conceded that he’ll need to get up to speed quicker than usual. In addition to this being an F1 Sprint weekend, this is Bortoleto’s first Miami Grand Prix. Which means he has just one practice session to put everything together.
“Well, it’s a new track for me,” said Bortoleto when asked about his expectations this week. “[S]print event, you know, you need to always be a bit more aggressive on the way you go into the weekend because you don’t have much time to learn a new track as you do in a normal weekend.
“You have only one [free practice session].
“So I would say yeah, just trying to be a bit more aggressive, trying to push the limits in the early stage of the weekend, and trying to get the confidence with the car and the track to be able to perform straight away, but obviously we need to see this weekend as a normal weekend somehow you can score points and everything, but still the big race is on Sunday.
“It’s also about building up the confidence and everything to on Saturday.”
That process begins tomorrow in that single practice session.
SB Nation will be on the ground for the entire Miami Grand Prix, so check our story stream all week long for full coverage!
