🏎️ Brazil is back on the grid

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Bortoleto signals Brazil’s big-time return as he lines up for Australian GP

If previous seasons of Formula 1 could be criticized for merely providing fans with more of the same, Thursday’s press day ahead of this weekend’s 2025 season opener in Melbourne, Australia showed that this year will be one of major upheaval.

Not only is there plenty of buzz about Lewis Hamilton’s first race for Ferrari — with one of the most iconic drivers in history representing the most iconic team in history — but there are also five rookies making their Formula 1 debuts this weekend.

For Brazilian fans, this air of renewal holds special significance, as one of those five newbies is 20-year-old Gabriel Bortoleto — who in the early hours of Sunday morning will become the first Brazilian full-time driver on the Formula 1 grid in eight years, since Felipe Massa retired from the category in 2017.

For the country that produced lauded champions like Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet and Emerson Fittipaldi, those eight years have felt more like 80.

While New Zealand’s Liam Lawson has pushed his way into the prestigious senior Red Bull team, and teenage Italian Kimi Antonelli is tipped to be the sport’s next big thing at Mercedes, Bortoleto is the rookie with the most concrete results under his belt. The youngster from Osasco won Formula 3 at the first time of asking in 2023, then F2 the following year — a feat that current racing stars Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Oscar Piastri managed before him.

Compared to his peers, Bortoleto spent a short amount of time racing in the development squad of a major constructor, but with teams looking for youth for this season, Kick Sauber saw the Brazilian as the natural choice, luring him away from McLaren’s young driver program.

“I’ve never seen someone with such maturity at 20 years old, with the clarity of who he needs to be and what he has to do,” experienced Formula 1 journalist Julianne Cerasoli told The Brazilian Report. “We can't guarantee that he’ll get results, because it doesn’t depend on him alone. F1 is a constructor’s championship, to see who has the best car and who best operates that machinery. But we can be sure Bortoleto is going to work very hard toward achieving success.”

Indeed, Cerasoli touches on an important point ahead of Bortoleto’s maiden season. F2 and F3 are examples of what motorsport calls “spec series,” in which every driver races with the same car. In Formula 1, the cars are far more complex to drive and each have their own variations and possibilities for modification. All five rookies will face a learning curve this year, Bortoleto perhaps more than most.

What’s more, Kick Sauber is expected to be among the teams bringing up the rear this season, with one of the grid’s least consistent cars. This was clear after the qualifying session this morning, with celebrations around Bortoleto earning 15th place on the grid.

With Brazil having waited so long to see a compatriot lining up at an F1 Grand Prix, the real possibility of seeing young Bortoleto finishing well outside the points week-in, week-out may end up leaving the casual fan frustrated. But, as Cerasoli explained, it is all part of the process.

“It is important that his messaging is clear, so that the fans understand that he is embarking on a long-term project. There are always going to be those uninformed fans who base their opinions solely on results, that’s inevitable, but this can be controlled if Bortoleto communicates [his expectations] well.”

And, so far, he has done well in this regard, setting out clear objectives to constantly improve throughout the season, learn from his errors, and never make the same mistake twice.

Furthermore, with the experienced Nico Hülkenberg alongside him in the Sauber paddock, Bortoleto will have a useful yardstick for his progress. “Hülkenberg isn’t going to be his ‘buddy,’ his mentor, he’s going to compete with Bortoleto and won’t want to give anything away,” Cerasoli added.

He will line up ahead of his German teammate on Sunday, but that is not expected to be the norm.

Brazilian motorsport is still here

Around the world, Formula 1 is becoming more and more popular, while its fan demographics become younger and younger. Brazil has gone in the same direction, with a survey last year from Ibope Repucom showing a 63% increase in the number of people “interested or very interested” in motorsport between 2019 and 2024.

Much of this can be credited to “Drive to Survive,” Netflix’s fly-on-the-wall documentary series showing the behind-the-scenes of a Formula 1 season. Debuting in 2019, it is now in its seventh run, providing new fans with plenty of previously unknown narrative and context, engaging them even more with the teams and their drivers.

“We also forget that ‘Drive to Survive’ became popular just before Covid, and that F1 was the first major global sport to return after the start of the pandemic. People were at home, they had recently been introduced to the sport, and they kept following it,” noted Cerasoli.

For this burgeoning demographic of Brazilian Formula 1 fans, the only thing missing was a countryman to cheer for. There have been attempts to play up a link between Lewis Hamilton and Brazil — with the Brit even being awarded honorary Brazilian citizenship in 2022 — but the excitement around Bortoleto’s victorious F2 season last year proved that there is a hunger for a born-and-bred Brazilian on the grid.

“They said Formula 1 would die in Brazil without a driver from the country,” added Cerasoli. “That didn’t happen, but the potential for growth with a Brazilian back on the grid is enormous.”

Other stories we’re following

✂️ Another twist in the Neymar soap opera: after sealing his return to the Brazil squad, he had to be cut from the team on Friday due to a persistent thigh injury. 

💥 World Cup-winning former player Ronaldo announced the withdrawal of his embryonic candidacy for president of CBF, Brazil’s football governing body, complaining that the heads of state federations refused to meet with him. He said on social media that Brazilian football is “poorly managed, centralized and lacking transparency.”

🥊 Light heavyweight MMA fighter Alex “Poatan” Pereira lost his championship belt at UFC 313 this past weekend to Russia’s Magomed Ankalaev. The country now has only one current belt-holder across the UFC’s 11 men’s and women’s divisions: flyweight Alexandre Pantoja. (You would have to go back to 2006 for the last time Brazil did not have a single UFC champion.)

• Brazil’s Maurício Ruffy walked away from UFC 313 with a Performance of the Night bonus, after he knocked out King Green with a spinning wheel kick in the first round of their lightweight bout.

⚽ Brazil will have seven representatives in Monday’s draw for the group stage of the Copa Libertadores, South American football’s answer to the Champions League. Besides holders Botafogo, Flamengo, Fortaleza, Internacional, Palmeiras and São Paulo, Bahia booked their place with a tight qualifying win over Uruguayan side Boston River. Giants Corinthians, on the other hand, were knocked out by Ecuador’s Barcelona.

🤝 The heads of Brazil’s top-flight football clubs met on Tuesday for the annual Technical Council ahead of the new national championship season. Two potential rule changes for 2027 gained steam: reducing the number of clubs relegated from the top division from four to three and reducing the number of foreign players each squad can register from nine to six.

• Despite player complaints about artificial pitches, which we covered last week, the issue was only touched upon in passing during the meeting.