Gabriel Bortoleto will face “a lot of pressure” after ending wait for Brazilian F1 driver

Ex-F1 driver Rubens Barrichello believes 2025 Sauber driver Gabriel Bortoleto will be under “a lot of pressure” during his rookie campaign.

Bortoleto completes Sauber’s F1 driver line-up for the 2025 campaign alongside Nico Hulkenberg.

The 20-year-old is the first Brazilian on the F1 grid since Felipe Massa in 2017.

With a long, rich history of Brazilians in the sport with world champions such as Nelson Piquet, Emerson Fittipaldi and Ayrton Senna, while Barrichello and Massa were multiple race winners, the pressure will be on Bortoleto.

Speaking on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Barrichello offered his view on Bortoleto ahead of his F1 debut next year.

“I do rate him for sure,” Barrichello said. “Right now it’s not a question of his driving ability. It’s to see how well he’s prepared to deliver.

“Right now, everything is lovely. People look at you differently, the paddock is watching you and the behaviour right now is just fun.

“But he is a very good driver, we just have to see how he develops on mind management, on how he manages things because it’s going to be a lot of pressure.

“He’s the next one, for a very long time we didn’t have [a Brazilian driver] so a lot of expectations from the public so we have to see.”

Barrichello enjoyed a great career, spanning between 1993 and 2011.

He gave Bortoleto the following advice: “Get to know yourself. That’s the best advice I could give him right now.

“We don’t have to get angry or feel bad about the bad times. The bad times exist for us to be better.

“It would have been boring if we didn’t have that, you would have won all the races and you don’t know what’s the value of actually going through and winning a race.”