The Monaco Grand Prix ended with another ‘zero’ for Sauber, finishing outside the points with both Nico Hülkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto, who had finished on the podium last year in the Sprint race in Monte Carlo in Formula 2. However, for the young Brazilian, there was the slight consolation of finishing ahead of his more experienced teammate, almost exactly as had happened in China.
The incident at the start
As in that case, Gabriel Bortoleto crossed the line in 14th place in Monaco, contrary to all early expectations following the incident at the Portier exit, where he hit the barriers after a close battle with Kimi Antonelli: “Monaco has always been known for exciting qualifying and practice sessions, but the races often end up being rather uneventful because overtaking is very difficult,” commented the 2004-born driver. “It wasn’t any different, despite the sport trying something new with tyre regulations; it didn’t work very well, and the team orders that came out of it made the race slow, with everyone lapping four or five seconds off their real pace, no tyre degradation, and overtaking impossible. My race was already in a tough position after the first lap due to my incident with Kimi. It’s a shame because I made a good move on the outside at the hairpin, gaining position nicely, but then he was slightly too optimistic at Turn 8. He overdid it by going a bit wide, and to avoid a collision with him, I ended up hitting the wall, destroying the front wing and compromising my race. It’s frustrating because I felt that without the incident, we could have also tried to play the team game and maybe gained some advantage. Looking ahead, we’ll keep working hard on the car and its setup, and hopefully that will help us improve our qualifying and race positions. Being consistently in Q2 or occasionally fighting for Q3 would allow us to get closer to the fight for points.”
Double stops, double ‘no’
The mandatory double pit stop rule was not well received by either Gabriel Bortoleto or Nico Hülkenberg, who commented on his 16th-place finish: “I had a good start, gaining a position on the first lap, but the rest of the race didn’t go as we hoped. Unfortunately, I often found myself stuck in traffic, mostly due to the teams ahead clearly running strategic games. Lapping three to five seconds off the pace to give pit stop space to teammates slowed me down enormously and didn’t make for an enjoyable race. Of course, team orders are part of the sport, but from a racing perspective, this wasn’t what everyone was hoping for. Realistically, starting inside the top ten is probably the only way to avoid it, and although our strategy and pit stops were well executed, there wasn’t much we could do to achieve a better result.”
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