Gabriel Bortoleto has explained how opting to pit for slick tyres at the start of the British Grand Prix led to his early exit from the race, with the Brazilian admitting that he \u201cmade a mistake\u201d in the changing conditions.<\/p>\n
While most cars prepared to take the start on intermediate tyres \u2013 following intermittent heavy rain showers at Silverstone in the hours prior to the race \u2013 a few, including Bortoleto<\/a>, dived into the pits at the end of the formation lap to bolt on the slicks.<\/p>\n The Kick Sauber<\/a> driver returned to the track on the medium compound but spun off just a few laps later, ending up in the gravel before getting going again. With a piece of his front wing left near the track, the yellow flags were thrown and Bortoleto subsequently pulled off, bringing out a Virtual Safety Car.<\/p>\n Asked to talk through what had happened afterwards, Bortoleto responded: \u201cIt\u2019s not difficult, it\u2019s very simple what happened. I made a mistake, I decided to go for the mediums for the slicks set.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought the track was going to dry up a bit quickly, with a lot of wind we were having this week and sunny conditions at that moment. I thought it was the right call to do at the time, I didn\u2019t expect rain as well after, so I thought, \u2018Let\u2019s do this, maybe we can gain some positions here\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThen the restart was very tricky, low grip. I went on the power out of T1 and I had a big snap, tried to correct it and I didn\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n \u201cI touched the rear wing on the wall and the rear wing was a bit broken, so I preferred to stop on track not to risk any debris staying around, and [it was] just race over for me there.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the challenging end to his own race, there was plenty of reason for the team to celebrate after Nico Hulkenberg<\/a> scored a long-awaited debut F1 podium<\/a> by finishing the race in P3, a result that Bortoleto was delighted about.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s such a special day for me, for the team,\u201d the 20-year-old smiled. \u201cI really enjoy working with Nico \u2013 for me he\u2019s one of the most talented drivers I\u2019ve ever met in my life.<\/p>\n \u201cDefinitely the best team mate I ever had in many senses, [as a] person, as a driver and everything, and I think he deserves it. He\u2019s such a hard worker and he puts a lot of effort in things. He\u2019s been able this year to just do outstanding races, and he deserves it. Just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n The result has hauled Kick Sauber into sixth place of the Teams\u2019 Championship<\/a> on 41 points, putting them five points clear of Racing Bulls<\/a> and Aston Martin<\/a> in seventh and eighth respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gabriel Bortoleto has explained how opting to pit for slick tyres at the start of the British Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-249277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114820271560499585","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}