The Brazilian wants to close the gap to the leaders.

The traditional Hungaroring circuit, on the outskirts of Budapest, Hungary, will host the ninth round of the Formula 2 World Championship this weekend (July 20-21). Currently in fourth place in the standings, Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto, a member of the McLaren F1 team’s young talent program, arrived highly motivated for the races.

Coming off strong performances in recent rounds and with a positive growth curve, Bortoleto believes he has the chance to put into practice the intense preparation he had in recent days and naturally reduce his gap to the Championship leaders. To this end, together with the Invicta Racing team, the young driver from São Paulo has been deeply engaged in studying telemetry and videos from previous years’ races and has intensified his physical training.

“We are at the peak of the European summer, and here in Budapest, the heat is very intense. It was like this last year when I was still racing in F3, and this weekend will be no different. We are in a very important moment of the Championship, so every aspect of my preparation is crucial for the results in qualifying sessions and the races. The details at this point will define who will arrive in Abu Dhabi ready to secure the title. Our goal is to score as many points as possible this weekend and next week in Spa. This way, we can head into the Championship break aware of what we need to do in the final four rounds of the season,” explained the 19-year-old.

Hungaroring is one of the traditional circuits on the calendar. Inaugurated in 1986, the track has hosted historic races and consistently provides highly competitive events. Its 4.381-kilometer layout features 14 corners and just one long straight. There are two DRS activation zones in sequence: on the main straight and after turn 1. The Sprint Race will last 28 laps, and the Feature Race will last 37 laps. The record belongs to English driver Oliver Rowland, set in 2017 with a time of 1m26.268s.

BORTOLETO TO START FROM FOURTH POSITION

The F2 weekend program began this Friday with the only free practice session followed by qualifying. Gabriel Bortoleto, seeking to gather as much data as possible for the team, participated in practice with hard compound tires and a car loaded with fuel. Thus, with a time of 1m33.512s, he finished ninth.
Four hours later, the cars returned to the track for the qualifying session. On the first set of tires, Bortoleto put in a very fast lap and secured the top spot with a time of 1m30.269s. All the cars then returned to the pits, and in the final five minutes, they went back out with a new set of tires to try and improve their times. Gabriel improved by only 32 thousandths of a second from his initial mark, while some competitors improved significantly more. Thus, with a time of 1m30.237s, Bortoleto secured the fourth-best time of the session, which will allow him to start seventh in Saturday’s Sprint Race and fourth on Sunday.

“Above all, we need to understand what happened. We had the equipment to take pole position, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the necessary grip on the second set of tires to fully exploit our potential. We will study the data, find where we went wrong, and head into the races aiming to score as many points as possible,” concluded the driver sponsored by McLaren, Banco BRB, Porto, Ebury, Snapdragon, and Barthelemy.

Weekend schedule (Brasília Time):

Saturday (20th)
09:15 – 10:00 | Sprint Race

Sunday (21st)
05:05 – 06:05 | Feature Race

Pictures: James Gasperotti | Disclosure