Gabriel Bortoleto had an eventful race at the Formula 1 Hungarian GP. This Sunday (26), he even ran within the points zone, but finished in 11th place in the last race before the season’s summer break.
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At the Hungaroring, the Brazilian started in 14th and even lost positions at the start of the race. Over the laps, he managed to recover ground and at one point appeared in ninth place.
However, in the final laps he was overtaken and just missed out on points, finishing 11th – Nico Hülkenberg was ninth and scored the first points of 2026. Speaking to SporTV after the race, Bortoleto highlighted that he did the best he could with the Audi car, even believing in a top-10 finish, but the tires ‘died’ at the end.
“First of all, I think it was a good race. We managed to do what we could starting from the position we were in. It was complex at the beginning, at the start, as always, we lost some positions. I lost a lot of time in the race behind Ocon, I couldn’t get past him. It took me a long time and, at a certain point, I managed to, but by then I had already lost 10s to the Racing Bulls and to Nico [Hulkenberg],” he said.
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“After I managed to get rid of him, I was able to set a good pace and started to gain time lap after lap on the Racing Bulls and Nico. At one point I even thought I could get back into the fight. They all pitted, I continued and managed to extend the soft tire stint quite a bit, which was very good. It even seemed better than the hard tires in terms of durability, surprisingly. Then we put on the hard tires, as there was no way to put on soft or medium tires, because we didn’t have them available,” he continued.
“And we tried to go to the end. They did the opposite strategy, two stops, and we did just one. With 10 laps to go, I had no more tires. It was over, I couldn’t hold on there anymore, it was impossible. And, obviously, Virtual Safety Car, I got stuck behind… The blue flag system stopped working, so I was behind [Oliver] Bearman and Carlos] Sainz for a long time, they wouldn’t get out of the way. So I got a bit screwed there, it took me a while to get past them,” he concluded.
Read more F1: Bortoleto just misses out on points and is 11th in the Hungarian GP
