After an extended period of mulling over its driving options for Formula 1's 2025 season and beyond, Sauber had found itself in a binary choice between experience and youth. The Swiss outfit, which becomes Audi in 2026, has opted for the latter; Valtteri Bottas will leave the team at the end of the year, and F2 championship leader Gabriel Bortoleto will join in the Finn's place.
Sauber's hiring of the promising Bortoleto gives Brazil one of its own full-time F1 drivers to support since Felipe Massa left the grid at the end of 2017. Bortoleto joins an illustrious cast of names to hail from the South American nation: Emerson Fittipaldi, Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Carlos Pace, Rubens Barrichello, et al, and will hope to have the chance to thread his own legacy into F1's rich tapestry - if he's able to get up to speed and impress, of course.
This is the culmination of a whirlwind few years for Bortoleto, who scarcely featured on the radar of most in the F1 paddock until he started winning races in Formula 3 - and, eventually, the title - in his debut season. McLaren promptly snapped him up for its junior team, but was adamant that it would not stand in his way if an F1 seat became available. Thanks to his impressive performance in F2 this year, his first season in the second-tier category, that eventuality became more likely; should the Brazilian complete the F2-F3 double, he'll join the likes of Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Oscar Piastri to achieve that feat in recent years.
With Sauber, a team which is expected to remain towards the back in 2025 as it focuses on its preparation for the new '26 formula as Audi, Bortoleto has a low-pressure environment to learn his trade and a well-known benchmark in Nico Hulkenberg alongside him at the team.
Who is Gabriel Bortoleto?
For those less familiar with the Paulista, let's start with his oeuvre in motorsport thus far. After racing in karts in both Brazil and Europe, he first stepped into the world of single-seaters with Prema for the 2020 Italian F4 season. He finished fifth that year in a season won by Alpine junior Gabriele Mini, but earned an immediate step up to the Formula Regional European Championship for its first year after merging with the Formula Renault Eurocup series.
His first year in a more powerful car was a trying one, joining Fernando Alonso's FA Racing team - then in a partnership with MP Motorsport - and finished 15th overall. The highlight of that year was his second-place finish at the Red Bull Ring, where he crossed the line within three seconds of champion Gregoire Saucy. Bortoleto remained in touch with Alonso through his A14 management stable, but switched to the more competitive R-ace GP squad to finish sixth overall in his sophomore campaign - claiming two wins at Spa and Barcelona.
Trident signed Bortoleto for the 2023 F3 season, but he was a relative outsider when it came to the pre-season title discourse; Prema was well-stocked with talent with a three-pronged front line of Paul Aron, Zak O'Sullivan and 2022 FRECA champion Dino Beganovic, MP Motorsport had future Williams driver Franco Colapinto on its books, Campos had second-year driver Pepe Marti, while Hitech had Mini, Sebastian Montoya and GB3 champion Luke Browning all vying for a title win.
In a competitive season, Bortoleto's consistency won out. He picked up second on the grid for the opening round in Bahrain, from which he took victory in the feature race when polesitter Mini was slapped with a five-place penalty for a starting grid infringement. Next, Bortoleto took pole at the following Melbourne round; in the reversed-grid sprint he rose to sixth, but held his nerve from the front in Albert Park's feature race to complete a lights-to-flag victory and take an early 20-point lead in the championship after four races.
Bortoleto did not win again in 2023, but never once relinquished the championship lead; the other title contenders took points off each other, while the Trident driver scored in every race between his Bahrain feature win in March and Hungary's feature race in July. The streak ended with his retirement from the bizarre Spa-Francorchamps sprint, in which there were no consecutive laps of green-flag racing in damp conditions, as Dino Beganovic locked up at La Source and knocked Bortoleto's left-rear tyre to cause a race-ending puncture. He only finished 11th in the feature race, entering the Monza finale 38 points clear of Aron in the title race.
He subsequently wrapped the title up qualifying for the Monza round as Aron failed to get pole, and an impressive sprint race served as his victory lap after finishing second behind Colapinto. Aron's Vitantonio Liuzzi tribute act into Turn 1 collected Jonny Edgar and Marti in the process, as the Estonian narrowly missed Bortoleto. From eighth, the newly-crowned champion carved his way through the field in the following 18 laps. The final pass on second-placed Mari Boya was a test of bravery; the Spaniard had him on the grass through Curva Grande, but Bortoleto held the line through the Variante della Roggia to complete the move.
Earning McLaren support for his first year in F2, Bortoleto signed with the Invicta Racing outfit - formerly known as Virtuosi - to join Kush Maini at the squad. Perhaps needing more time to get its head around the new Dallara chassis, Invicta started the year more slowly versus the likes of Campos and Rodin. Bahrain was a solid first outing for Bortoleto, yielding points finishes in both races after the Sao Paulo native took pole for the feature race, but a four-race stretch of no points seemed to put his hopes of a first-year title on ice, starting with a crash in qualifying at Jeddah that set him out of contention in Saudi Arabia.
Two weeks later, and starting second in the Melbourne sprint, Bortoleto was collateral in the clash between Red Bull juniors Isack Hadjar and Marti, when Hadjar swiped across the pair of them off the line. Hydraulic issues then yielded another retirement in the feature race Down Under.
Bortoleto stalled the poor luck with a feature race pole at the Imola round in May, taking second in Sunday's race, and repeated that position in Monaco's sprint race a week later. It took until the end of June for him to record his first F2 win, which emerged through victory in the Red Bull Ring feature race. He was now just 32 points off the championship lead, held by Paul Aron.
But the most impressive aspect of his season so far was victory from 22nd on the grid in the Monza feature race. Bortoleto failed to get a competitive lap in during qualifying after a spin, and had already achieved the nearly-impossible feat of tying with Dennis Hauger for eighth during the sprint to earn both drivers a point. Bortoleto was up to 14th by the end of lap five, and then cycled into the front while his fellow soft-tyre starters ahead all pitted early doors. When Hauger was pitched into a spin at Turn 1 by a slight touch from Ritomo Miyata to bring out a safety car, Bortoleto could pit cheaply and returned to the circuit in sixth, and immediately threw together a series of quick-fire passes to take the lead - and, ultimately, a famous victory.
How did Bortoleto get the Sauber seat?
When Nico Hulkenberg was signed early doors for Sauber in 2025, very much a decision taken with the view of becoming an Audi works driver in 2026, the team had turned its attention to wooing Carlos Sainz for the other car. But Sauber had been gazumped by Williams, as Sainz bought into James Vowles' vision for the team and wanted to become part of a project that returned Williams to the front of the grid.
This put Sauber into a protracted decision-making process for the other seat, one that remained dynamic as it essentially waited to see how the market would fall. It knew that, if all else failed, it could retain Valtteri Bottas; Zhou Guanyu looked to be out of luck, as the Chinese driver has paled in comparison his more experienced team-mate. Sauber also chased Esteban Ocon, but the Frenchman was dead set on joining Haas when his departure from Alpine was announced.
With options among the established drivers starting to run out, Bottas had moved ahead in the race to retain his seat - although Bortoleto's gathering momentum in F2 was starting to mark him out as an attractive candidate.
Liam Lawson had been another option, particularly once it looked like Daniel Ricciardo had worked his way through the early threats to his RB drive, and the Kiwi was understood to be a free agent if Red Bull could not grant him a drive in either of its two teams by the end of 2024. Ricciardo's place then became more tenuous and was ousted after Singapore, taking Lawson out of the equation as he was promoted from his reserve role.
The form of newcomer Franco Colapinto threw another spanner in the works. The Argentine had come into F1 with little expectation placed upon his shoulders as Logan Sargeant's replacement, but immediately made an impression in his opening outings with Williams. With no seat available at 2025 with the Grove team, Vowles wanted to sound out an opportunity at Sauber and help Colapinto remain on the grid, but the alleged interest from Red Bull's Helmut Marko appears to have complicated things.
Either way, Sauber likely wanted a driver with no strings attached; Williams would have presumably kept Colapinto on a bungee cord in case Albon or Sainz were unavailable or casting their nets elsewhere. McLaren had no such qualms over Bortoleto; although the team presumably would like to keep tabs on the Brazilian, it knew that it had Norris and Piastri under lock and key for the next few years and thus could not make spurious promises to keep him.
Sauber also suggested Mick Schumacher was an option, given Mattia Binotto's previous relationship with the ex-Haas driver through the Ferrari Driver Academy. Whether this was seriously mooted remains unknown, but Binotto admitted that he was at least "evaluating" Schumacher.
Bottas seemed confident that a deal could be done, but months have since passed and the team appeared no closer to doing a deal with the Nordic mullet-owner for 2025. Although the championship positions do not show this, Bottas has been well clear of Zhou in terms of overall pace - but the Swiss team's penchant for weird strategies in the vague hope of scoring its first point has masked overall race performance.
As such, Bottas appears to be out of time. Sauber has seen the performances of Colapinto, Lawson, and Haas driver-elect Oliver Bearman and figured it might be best to introduce a rookie to the party. Next to Hulkenberg, Bortoleto has a clear yardstick to measure up to; if he can keep pace with the veteran German in his first year, it will be symbolic of a driver with a bright future in F1.
What have people said about Bortoleto?
Fernando Alonso spoke highly of his protege, noting that he was not afforded the same opportunities as some of his F2 and F3 counterparts. Although largely hidden from view, it is known that multiple junior series drivers undertake testing in old machinery to gain experience of F2/F3-level cars, which Bortoleto has not been able to do.
"He's an incredible talent and a very humble person as well – I think that's the biggest thing that we need to work on," Alonso explained in September. "He's a hard worker aside from his talent, and I think that's why in Formula 3 and Formula 2 he had this much progress. I think also he's someone that is taking things very seriously as well, which at that age is never a guarantee.
"On budgets and things like that, he won the championship as a rookie in Formula 3, and he's fighting for the championship as a rookie in Formula 2, but without the testing of many other rookies. So he's probably the only 'rookie rookie' in the championship. So this was an amazing achievement so far. And let's see what the future brings. But it's a matter of time that he gets to F1."
McLaren team boss Andrea Stella reckoned that Bortoleto's success made it "very normal and natural" that other teams would be interested, and explained that "McLaren will not stop the possibility for Gabriel to drive in Formula 1". But perhaps the biggest endorsement came from reigning champion Max Verstappen, who stated that "if I was Sauber, I would have signed him already" – and used 2025 as a preparation season. This, he added, would afford Bortoleto the chance to get mistakes out of his system before Audi comes in for the following year.
"That's the future with young drivers. And ‘26, a big rule change, it's always good to get used to a team already for a year, make your mistakes here and there, get integrated well, and understand the car a bit. You always feel much more prepared and comfortable when you then start in ‘26."
