Sauber continues to hire new engineers to bolster the team ahead of Audi’s arrival in 2026. However, 2025 represents a very interesting transition year, as it will be the season to integrate and blend the recent additions into the structure.
Sauber will also have a new driver lineup, featuring the experienced Nico Hülkenberg as a reference point and the young rookie Gabriel Bortoleto, who arrives after winning both Formula 3 and Formula 2 as a rookie in consecutive years.
For this new adventure, Sauber has also decided to assign Gabriel Bortoleto a new race engineer, the Spaniard Jose Manuel Lopez, who joins from McLaren—the same team Gabriel Bortoleto was previously affiliated with. The Brazilian was part of the Woking squad’s academy before moving to Sauber.
At McLaren, Lopez was Lando Norris’s performance engineer and occasionally worked as his race engineer, filling in for the primary engineer, Will Joseph, on the radio. In fact, the role of performance engineer, which focuses on all performance-related aspects, is just one step below that of race engineer in the hierarchy.
In 2024, Lopez was assigned to McLaren’s driver development program, closely following Gabriel Bortoleto’s F2 season and building a strong relationship with the Brazilian, which was considered when Sauber decided to hire him.
Lopez has nearly 10 years of experience in F1, having debuted in the category with Haas in 2016. Over the years, he has worked as a performance engineer for Esteban Gutiérrez and Kevin Magnussen before joining McLaren in 2020.
Before entering Formula 1, Lopez worked for the junior team Carlin, where he collaborated with several drivers who later reached the top category, including Carlos Sainz.
Gabriel Bortoleto’s teammate, Nico Hülkenberg, will have Steven Petrik as his race engineer. Petrik was hired from Ferrari last year and worked with Valtteri Bottas starting from the 2024 Miami GP. Like Lopez, Petrik was previously a performance engineer at Ferrari.
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