“We are not joining as just a car manufacturer, you know, we are building everything from scratch” says Audi F1 driver Gabriel Bortoleto when asked about winning a championship by 2023

 At the launch and reveal of the Audi F1 Revolut car in Berlin, we had a chance to talk to Gabriel Bertoleto about his thoughts on the newly developed car by Audi after Sauber’s take over and his future plans for this season

Thoughts seeing and driving the new car

When asked about what Gabriel Bortoleto felt about the new car her said “that it feels nicer than last year for sure, when I got into the seat and left the garage, got a little emotional there, it being an incredible moment. The shakedown was only to see it everything is running properly, the real testing will begin soon officially to understand the real world aspects of the new car.

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and the winter break

It felt that this break was not needed by Gabriel as when we asked him about the duration of this short span he said “It’s only my second season in F1, if I could, I wouldn’t even have a winter break. It was nice to spend time with family and wanted to go back and start again.” “I was doing sim everyday” he said when we asked about time spent over the sim during the winter break.

Realistic team goal until 2030

“We are building our own power unit, we’re not just joining as a car manufacturer, we are actually building everything from scratch, you know it is not going to be an easy task to win a championship by 2030, but we are bringing in great people, the ones already there are very motivated, so I feel we are in the right direction” says Gabriel Bortoleto on the team goal.

Personal goal of 2026

When asked about his very own personal goal for 2026, Gabriel Bortoleto said “it is diffucult to say now as I have not tried the car yet. But let’s put it this way that is the car is not competitive in Bahrain or Barcelona, it does not matter what way I want to be. I want to be winning races realistically but you know that will not happen in the first season itself.”

Gabi Estefan’s comment F1 drivers forgetting what they learnt in go-karting

When told about Gabi’s comment about how these cars will make F1 drivers forget everything they learnt from go-karting, he said, “it is not upto me to judge someone’s comment, but I would not put it this way, I feel it is still a four-wheel car with a steering and you still need to drive it like you did in F4, F3, and F2.”

Favourite track in the U.S. and what he drives off track.

When asked about his favourite track in the U.S. Gabriel said that “I prefer Austin over Las Vegas as it is made in a surface that keeps changing a bit every years, and the track layout is incredible, except for it being a little bumpy.” As for his daily, he said “he has an RS6, which is incredible looking. Sometimes in Brazil I also drive the V10 R8.”

This year the driver being more important than the last

When asked about the drivers being more important this year than last year Gabriel said that “everything is so new for everyone that even we have not tried the cars yet and everyone is speculation in a way that we are going to need to learn everything. As soon as we learn it will all be an automatic thing.” “We are just going to need to drive it in the limits, like we have always done” says Gabriel Bortoleto.

Different power for different laps

This year different laps will have different powers, when we asked Gabriel what he thought he said “Ideally you want to have the most consistent thing possible, because you don't want to arrive one lap at 40kmph faster than the other one, but there is still a lot of development going on.”

Different expectations from Gabriel and Nico

When asked about if the team expects differently from him and Nico, he said “I feel like we are both in a way that we are happy where we are, and the team is happy with us, and I feel like they want to see us performing on track and extracting the maximum of the car.”

A growing Audi fanbase

As Audi already has a big fanbase, we asked Gabriel about the F1 fanbase, and he said “For me, as a Brazilian, it's a bit different because we probably didn't have this Audi thing because we haven't had any Brazilian driver in Formula 1 for Audi because Audi was not in Formula 1. But definitely I can feel it right now.