Racing
© Jonathan Borba
Gabriel Bortoleto gave Audi another eighth-place finish at the Belgian Grand Prix, turning a circuit the team had expected to expose the R26 into fresh proof that its midfield progress is starting to hold.
Bortoleto started eighth at Spa-Francorchamps after reaching Q3 on Saturday and converted it into four more points with a controlled race. For a car Audi did not expect to suit the 7.004 km high-speed layout, that mattered as much as the result itself. Audi Racing Director Allan McNish said “another points finish is a fantastic result for the team” at a circuit “we didn't expect to suit our car.”
The key was that Audi not only found pace, but executed when the race opened up. McNish pointed to a 2.1-second stop for Bortoleto and a 2.7-second double-stack for Nico Hülkenberg during the Virtual Safety Car phase, a sequence he said put Bortoleto ahead of the Racing Bulls at a crucial moment. From there, Bortoleto managed the race to secure a second straight eighth place after his identical finish at Silverstone.
“I’m extremely happy with today’s result,” Bortoleto said. “I think we maximised everything we had this weekend.” He called the back-to-back points finishes “a huge boost for all of us” and said it was “a great feeling to know we are in the position to deliver results like this and keep fighting in the top ten now.”
That left the other side of Audi’s garage with a more frustrating story. Hülkenberg finished 13th, even though McNish said his race pace was comparable to Bortoleto’s. The German started only 12th after qualifying problems with gearbox and hydraulics, then lost more ground at the start in a midfield pack where track position was critical.
“There was a lot of fighting in the midfield today, but we paid the price for starting too far back and also losing a few positions at the start, which made the race even more difficult,” Hülkenberg said. He added that it was “always going to be hard to recover.”
His best chance came under the Virtual Safety Car, but the race turned against him after the stops. Hülkenberg said the neutralization “gained us a few seconds,” but “probably needed to last just a little longer.” Instead, he rejoined behind Pierre Gasly and Liam Lawson, got caught in their fight, and could not force his way through. “With our lack of straight-line speed, it was difficult to make any further progress,” he said, even if the “pace itself actually felt quite good by our standards.”
That contrast between the two cars was the clearest read on Audi’s current level. Bortoleto had the track position to use the package; Hülkenberg had enough pace to stay in the battle but not the top speed to escape traffic once he fell into it. Spa had been expected to magnify exactly that weakness, which makes Bortoleto’s result more significant than another routine points finish.
It also fits the direction Audi had already been pointing toward. Before Spa, McNish had said the team had been knocking on the door of the points since Monaco and had increasingly got on top of its early reliability issues from Canada onward. Back-to-back top-eight finishes at Silverstone and Spa now give that progress more weight, especially with the second one coming at a track that should have been one of the car’s harder tests.
Bortoleto said Audi will “keep pushing to get more” starting in Budapest next week, and Spa gave the team a stronger reason to believe this run is becoming more than a one-off.