Gabriel Bortoleto won the Formula 2 title at Yas Marina on Sunday by finishing second in the feature race behind Joshua Dürksen as title rival Isack Hadjar stalled on the grid.

By Martin Lloyd

Having started second, one place ahead of Hadjar, Bortoleto was preparing to defend from the Campos driver in his efforts to preserve his drivers’ championship lead of 4.5 points. Bortoleto’s Invicta squad were also fighting Campos in the teams’ standings, with Invicta 24.5 points ahead after Saturday’s sprint race.

Following Hadjar’s stall, the outcome of both championships became formalities, with Bortoleto ultimately becoming the second Brazilian F2 champion in three years after Felipe Drugovich’s 2022 triumph. Red Bull junior Hadjar finished 19th, one lap down.

Bortoleto said he was unaware of the extent of his fortune during the race.

“There was a Red Bull around,” Bortoleto said. “I thought that that guy was Hadjar and that he was just behind at the time, and it took my engineer two laps [after the start of the race] to tell me he was not there anymore. He was like, ‘Woah, actually, Hadjar has stalled’. I was a bit surprised about it, obviously, but I was a bit confused already because the radio was cutting out a bit.

“I think I was so focused on pulling the gap to P2 at the time because I was leading, but I didn’t understand that Isack was out until the last two laps, when I asked my engineer, ‘Where’s Isack? Am I safe to attack P2 and these guys?’ and he was like, ‘Mate, Isack is a lap down’. I was like, ‘Okay!’”

The result was a difficult one to take for Hadjar. With four feature race wins, he would have also been a worthy champion, having previously lost points thanks to mechanical failures. Still, rumours suggest he may move up to the RB F1 team should Red Bull part ways with Sergio Pérez and promote current RB driver Liam Lawson to their senior team. 

Bortoleto will move on to F1 with Sauber for 2025, but despite his recent success, his career has not always been plain sailing. He only took his first drivers’ title win last year in F3 and has now become the fourth driver to win back-to-back titles in F2 and F3 or predecessor series GP3.

Invicta also sealed the teams’ title with a 34.5-point margin over Campos, whose other driver, sprint race winner Pepe Martí, finished sixth.

Earlier in his career, Bortoleto endured difficult campaigns in FRegional Europe. He finished 15th in 2021 with the MP-run FA Racing team before placing sixth with R-ace GP in a second season in 2022 that, as he explained, had more difficulties than met the eye. 

“I think when you have tough moments in life, they make you a much stronger person as well,” Bortoleto told Feeder Series. “I have been through a lot of difficult moments in F4 and FRECA. Luckily in F2 and F3, I’ve not suffered with engine problems so far. In FRECA I can say I did.

“It hasn’t been easy to go in that season, suffering a lot with engine problems. When we actually changed it, we had very good race weekends, we won a lot of races. I think I was the guy that scored probably the most points. 

“But I think when I was having the difficult moments in FRECA, I understood that there was nothing that we could do as a team, so I needed to give that extra that maybe I could give the team. Maybe a lot of people didn’t see how we were struggling with that problem, but I was giving everything I had.

“I learned so many new techniques to, let’s say, hide the problem and improve in other areas to make it work, and those moments made me a better person, a better driver and a much better team player as well – because you need to be a very strong person with the team to go through difficult moments without going down or being depressive because you’re not winning races that you were expecting.”

Additional reporting by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency