Gabriel Bortoleto Says Audi’s 500-Strong Trackside Crowd Made His Back-to-Back Points Finishes Extra Special

• Gabriel Bortoleto scored back-to-back points finishes for the first time this season with eighth place at the Belgian Grand Prix
• The Brazilian rookie said more than 500 Audi employees traveled to Spa-Francorchamps to watch the team’s progress
• Teammate Nico Hulkenberg remains without a point this season even while matching Bortoleto’s pace closely in Belgium

Gabriel Bortoleto backed up his best result of the season with another eighth-place finish at the Belgian Grand Prix, giving Audi consecutive points finishes for the first time in 2026 and a reminder of how far the young team has progressed.

The 21-year-old crossed the line ninth on his debut at the Australian Grand Prix in March, but a run of near misses that included three eleventh-place finishes in a row at Monaco, Barcelona and Austria left Audi trailing its midfield rivals. Bortoleto’s charge to eighth at Silverstone marked a turning point, and he matched it at Spa-Francorchamps after another appearance in Q3.

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“The Team Did an Incredible Job”

Bortoleto could hardly contain his satisfaction after crossing the line at Spa. “I’m extremely happy,” he said. “I think that’s everything we could achieve this weekend. What can I say? The team did an incredible job.”

The result carried extra meaning given the scale of Audi’s presence trackside. “It’s also great to do this in front of more than 500 employees that came all the way from Switzerland, Bicester, Neuburg to watch us here,” Bortoleto said. “For sure, it was a great result.”

The Belgian Grand Prix weekend also fell four years after Audi first revealed its intentions to enter Formula 1, making Bortoleto’s point-scoring drive feel like proof of the progress the German manufacturer has made in that time.

Asked how much of a lift the result gave the team, Bortoleto did not hold back. “I hope a lot,” he said. “For me at least it’s a big boost. Obviously it’s incredible to have the feeling that we are being able to deliver results like this constantly now, and be fighting for points.”

Hulkenberg Still Waiting for His First Points

Bortoleto and teammate Nico Hulkenberg showed they can compete with the likes of Racing Bulls and Alpine in the midfield, but the German driver once again left a race without adding to his tally. Hulkenberg was locked in a fight with Franco Colapinto, Pierre Gasly and Liam Lawson in the closing stages at Spa-Francorchamps and eventually crossed the line 13th, a respectable result given he suffered a sudden hydraulic leak in Qualifying.

The leak was another example of the reliability issues that have hampered Hulkenberg’s season. Aside from retirements in Miami, Barcelona and Great Britain, he has come close to the top ten in almost every round without converting it into points.

“It was okay, a lot of fighting in the midfield but I was kind of paying the price for starting too far back,” Hulkenberg said. “I think both our cars lost quite a bit on the start of Lap 1, so that makes life even harder.”

Even without the result to show for it, Hulkenberg took some encouragement from the pace on display. “Otherwise, I think the performance is there, the speed for the midfield battle is there,” he said. “I think we were best of the rest together with the Racing Bulls, from what I can see, so that’s pretty positive and encouraging.”

Building Momentum Into the Second Half

Bortoleto’s consecutive results at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps put Audi in position to build real momentum heading into the second half of the season. The team remains in a tight fight through the midfield, with Racing Bulls and Alpine both showing similar pace across recent rounds, but Bortoleto’s ability to reach Q3 in back-to-back weekends points to a driver settling into his rookie campaign at exactly the right time.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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