Bortoleto braced to lose more places at Canadian GP start as Audi powertrain woes persist

Gabriel Bortoleto has conceded that Audi will almost certainly lose ground at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal on Sunday, after a difficult Saturday that left him 13th on the grid and his team-mate Nico Hulkenberg 11th — both outside Q3 for the sixth time in eight sessions this season.

The pessimism stems from a recurring pattern. Bortoleto and Hulkenberg each lost four positions off the line during Saturday’s sprint, a result the rookie Brazilian linked directly to ongoing issues with Audi’s debut F1 power unit.

“Most likely we’re going to lose positions again tomorrow, unless everyone behind me fucks it up at the start and I do a mega start,” Bortoleto said. “It’s true! What can I do? I’m not going to lie, be the optimistic here and then tomorrow we lose positions. It’s something we are working on, it’s clear, it’s not pointing fingers, it’s just a problem we have that we need to work on.”

Bortoleto was equally candid about qualifying itself, describing a session in which the car felt fundamentally unmanageable. “Very unhappy with the session, unhappy with the balance, with how I was driving,” he said. “I don’t think we maximised everything we had today. Just sliding all over the place, felt like driving on ice. Yesterday I was much more happy with the balance, with the driveability of the engine, and everything felt much more smooth, and today it was just sideways everywhere — I didn’t have confidence to brake, and then downshifts were extremely harsh.”

Hulkenberg ended up 0.029 seconds short of the Q3 cut-off, with Bortoleto 0.214s adrift, underlining how fine the margins are even as the team struggles with a power unit still in its infancy.

Bortoleto was clear that the problems are primarily powertrain-related rather than a chassis issue. “We are suffering a lot with power unit driveability, with power, that we need to work and improve,” he said. “We are trying, we are bringing things, updates on software, trying to make it better, but some stuff works, some stuff didn’t and we learn from them.”

The frank assessment reflects the scale of the challenge facing Audi as it attempts to develop its first-ever F1 power unit in a competitive environment, with both drivers absorbing the consequences of a programme that is still finding its feet mid-season.