Gabriel Bortoleto spoke a little more about his performance in the Azerbaijani Grand Prix qualifying in Formula 1, pointing out how Audi simply did not have pace during the weekend.
The days in Baku have not been exactly competitive for the Brazilian. After the free practice sessions were more subdued, he did not advance beyond Q1 in qualifying and will have to start from 17th on the grid.
Providing an assessment to SporTV after the session on the F1 street circuit, he pointed out that, as if it were another round on the calendar, the performance would be enough to advance, but in Azerbaijan he still lacks rhythm.
“If you look, a large part of qualifying this year I do with one set at the start and I don’t even go out with the second set of tires, because my lap on the first set is always very good. And it wasn’t different. Today, my first lap was 1s faster than my teammate’s, and the second was 0.5s,” he said.
“So, really, we don’t have pace. Because, normally, with this kind of lap, if I did it in another qualifying when we have the pace we usually have with the car, I would have easily passed. I wouldn’t even have gone out on track with the second set trying to save for Q3. But this weekend… These things happen,” he continued.
“We are on a street circuit. It’s not that we stayed waiting in the boxes either; we literally went back to the pits, did a pit stop, and left, there wasn’t much room to reposition myself there,” he concluded.
