Invicta Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto says he has the pace to be competitive in Formula 2, even if his results so far have not reflected it. Feeder Series caught up with the reigning Formula 3 champion before the Melbourne round.

By Steven Walton

After three rounds of the 2024 F2 season, the Brazilian driver has not yet picked up a big haul of points. He only has 15 to his name and now sits 12th in the F2 standings, nearly 50 points behind championship leader Zane Maloney.

“I’m happy that the pace is there,” Bortoleto told Feeder Series. “Maybe the results didn’t come yet, but I’m sure if we keep working hard and doing what we’re doing, it will come soon.”

While the results may not have come yet, he showed plenty of pace during the championship’s three-day in-season test in Barcelona last month. Bortoleto finished the first day at the top of the timesheets.

He later told the official Formula 2 website: “I don’t put much stock into the lap because at the end of the day, it wasn’t that quick of a lap. But we had some good lap times and had a good balance on the hard tyres, so that makes me comfortable and happy.”

His season so far

Bortoleto joined the F2 grid this year on the back of an impressive F3 title-winning campaign with Trident. He also now enjoys the backing of the McLaren Driver Development Programme, having joined in October 2023.

At the season opener in Bahrain, Bortoleto was up to speed immediately as he qualified second on the grid behind teammate Kush Maini. That result was later upgraded to pole position when Maini was disqualified for a technical infringement.

“Bahrain was very positive,” he said. “We had a great quali and then in the races, the sprint race was very good and then in the main race I made a mistake in the first lap that cost me probably a chance of winning or podium.”

The mistake Bortoleto made in Bahrain was hitting the rear of Isack Hadjar at the first corner, sending the Campos driver into a spin. He was handed a 10-second time penalty for causing the collision, but would recover to fifth by the end of the race.

During the second round in Saudi Arabia, Bortoleto hit the wall at the end of his final qualifying lap, meaning he couldn’t complete it. In the end, he qualified 15th. He couldn’t climb into the points in the sprint race and his feature race ended early due to a mechanical issue.

He endured an even worse time during the third round in Australia. Despite qualifying ninth, he did not finish either race due to circumstances outside his control. In the sprint race, he was eliminated before the first corner after colliding with Hadjar and his Campos teammate Pepe Martí. The stewards later found Hadjar to blame for the crash. In the feature race, hydraulic issues forced Bortoleto to retire after just six laps.

’We found a very good balance’

Bortoleto told Feeder Series that he was comfortable in this year’s new car, the first new chassis for the championship since 2018.

“Every session I go on track I get more and more comfortable,” he said. “I understand more about tyres and how does the turbo work in Formula 2 because in F3 we don’t have the turbo. My team did an amazing job setting up the car so quickly and we found a very good balance and also myself, I drove quite decent since the first test.”

“For sure there’s still loads of things to improve in my driving and a lot of things to do, but I think I’m quite happy where we are now.”

Bortoleto said that compared to F3, the F2 car was heavier and had more power, but he also described the step as “nothing crazy”. “You know, it’s still a four-wheel car [that] you need to drive it as fast as you can.”

Still, Bortoleto said he wanted to better understand how the tyres worked during qualifying in F2. Drivers in F3 use the same tyre compound throughout a weekend, whereas F2 uses two compounds and drivers often only get their first taste of the softer compound during the 30-minute qualifying session, which sets the grid for both races.

“In F2 sometimes you start, like in Bahrain, with hards and you go for softs in quali,” he said. “So it’s a little bit of a tricky situation because [of] this big jump you’re not used to doing in F3. I believe there is still a step to do on my side in understanding better when the tyres [are] in the right moment to push on a quali lap.”

Asked about his chances of winning this year’s F2 title, Bortoleto said: “I think if we keep doing the job that we are doing, in terms of a team and I keep having the progress I’ve been having, I think we have chances to be there, yes, to fight for it at least.”

F2 returns next weekend with round four in Imola, which will mark the start of the championship’s European leg of races.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency