Gabriel Bortoleto revealed he took in a factory visit at Sauber earlier this week, in the middle of the sport’s triple-header, in order to spend more time working with staff there, as well as new team principal Jonathan Wheatley.

The Brazilian rookie has impressed in his early races alongside Nico Hulkenberg so far, but is currently yet to get off the mark in the 2025 season.

Bortoleto: Sauber factory visit ‘best decision to be done’ despite hefty detour

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

As the crow flies, to add in a journey to Hinwil from Suzuka before heading to Bahrain would be around 3,600 miles further for Bortoleto to have travelled between races, compared to anyone to go directly from Japan to Sakhir – but he explained this move came of his own volition.

With Wheatley having officially taken the reins as team principal at the start of April, there is change at the top of the Sauber operation to become accustomed to, and the back-to-back Formula 3 and Formula 2 champion also wanted to take the opportunity to give detailed feedback to the team’s aerodynamicists and designers about where their car could potentially improve.

Rather than resting between races, Bortoleto took a different approach entirely with his factory visit, but explained why it was the “best decision to be done” from his perspective.

“The first weekend has been very busy for him, also, he wants to spend a lot of time with the team,” Bortoleto said of Wheatley to media including PlanetF1.com in Bahrain.

“I think this is a very good approach from his side, but I decided to go back to the factory between Japan and here. I was not supposed to, but I decided to, because I wanted to see the team and to have some time with Mattia [Binotto] and Jonathan.

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“We had a good chat there, and also here today, this morning, so it has been very good so far.”

When pressed on that decision and whether or not the decision was his, the Brazilian explained he wanted to make extra use of his time between races, albeit borne of his inability to relax while on the long flight back from Japan.

He replied: “Well, I have a big problem when I don’t sleep, I think a lot. So I went flat out sleeping in the first flight, and then in the second flight, I spent like, three hours, four hours awake, and I was looking outside of the window of the plane, and I was like, ‘I can go home now and just relax, or I can do something useful and and go back to the team.’

“So when I landed, actually, Mattia called me to speak. He was not in Japan, so he wanted to know a little bit about how was the weekend, and discuss some topics.

“I asked him, ‘Do you think it’s positive to come back to the factory to talk to the team? And [his reply] was ‘Absolutely, it’s very good, and we are going to be super happy if you if you are here.’

“So it was very positive, actually, because I managed to go to a lot of departments, talk to a lot of people, debrief a little bit our three first rounds of the season – and I think it was the best decision to be done.

“I’m a driver that likes to spend a lot of time with the team, and I think we had time to analyse a lot of things.

“We went through some data together and just had some looks. The racing team was actually already coming to Bahrain, so they didn’t go back. It was more the people from the factory, you know, the designers of the car.

“I went to the department of aerodynamics, and the designers, and we had some good looks at the data to understand what is not working in the car, and where do we need to go, what direction we need to push for.

“Obviously, we already had this clear, but when you are there, what they keep saying a lot is that the driver is the best sensor that the car has, even if we have a lot of sensors – so I think it’s very important to give very detailed and interesting feedback for them for where to go with the car.”

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