Gabriel Bortoleto admitted Fernando Alonso got the better of him with his DRS tactics in their fight for seventh place at the Austrian Grand Prix.

Alonso re-passed Bortoleto when the Sauber driver attacked him at turn three, regaining the position in the following DRS zone. Bortoleto said his rival slowed more than he expected, which meant Alonso reached the DRS detection line at the exit of the corner before he did, and was therefore able to use DRS to regain his position.

“I think I’ve done a mistake on my side that I went for a move in T3 and then he got the DRS at the line,” Bortoleto told media including RaceFans at Silverstone. “So if I maybe waited a bit more just before hitting the line and getting the DRS on exit, probably I would have got him there.

“That was a key moment because when you are fighting you have only one or two laps to make a move because it was already the end of the race.

“When I went for the move, he really slowed down at that moment. I tried to slow down as well, but I was already committed to the move and I couldn’t stop before the line. So I passed the DRS line before him. I think that was a moment that he played very smart and he managed to overtake me back and keep me behind for another lap.”

Bortoleto ran out of opportunities to pass Alonso as he had to slow to let race leader Lando Norris overtake him on the next lap, which was the last lap of the race. “I had Lando with the blue flags and obviously I needed to let him pass so I could not even try to overtake Fernando again,” said Bortoleto. “That was quite complicated.”

Alonso is Bortoleto’s manager, and the Sauber driver admitted “it felt a bit weird” to be fighting him for position. “Obviously he’s my manager and it’s Fernando at the same time: a guy that I’ve been watching racing since I started racing, and he was there already for many years.

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“But when you have the visor down, when you are fighting, you don’t think so much about who it is. Obviously it’s a bit different, still, I am not going to lie. But I gave it everything.

“There are some things I could have done better, probably, to pass him there. But he did an amazing job on defending and fighting and placing the car in the right places with the blue flags as well.”

Bortoleto scored the first points of his career last weekend with eighth place. However he suspects he could have finished higher if he had passed Alonso when he first had the chance.

“More is always possible,” said Bortoleto. “There is no perfect scenario or situation.

“I think we still did a good job on maximising things, but obviously I think P6 was quite realistic there because obviously I was in a two-stop strategy while Fernando and Liam [Lawson], they were on a one-stop.

“I think if I managed to overtake Fernando in the first try – when I didn’t, he did a good job in defending – probably I would have been able to catch Liam from the tyre advantage I had and maybe overtaken him as well.

“But it’s always ‘maybe, maybe’ and ‘possibly’. At the end of the day we finished P8 and that was the position I’ve been able to finish.”

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2025 Austrian Grand Prix

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