Bortoleto pleased to finish fifth in Baku Sprint after near race ending collision

Invicta Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto was pleased to overcome a difficult start, a collision with Christian Mansell and the barrier to finish fifth in Saturday’s Baku Sprint Race.
The Brazilian driver started in P5 but lost out to his teammate Kush Maini as well as Victor Martins and Zane Maloney in the opening exchanges, dropping him to P8.
However, he started to make his way further up the order after a quiet first half of the race, first overtaking Maloney for seventh.
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He made more progress after the late Safety Car restart – caused by Ritomo Miyata’s crash into the barrier – and was up to fifth despite colliding with Mansell’s Trident and the barrier at the same corner.
Bortoleto was able to continue, finishing in the position he started the race in, but speaking afterwards, he admits it was not that simple.
“It was quite a messy race at the start,” said Bortoleto. “I didn’t do one of my best starts, I got a bit stuck on the outside, this track is very dirty on the outside and you always want to be on the inside for T1 and T2, and obviously I was avoiding all the crashes I could.
“I needed to score important points today, but then dropped to P8 and maybe P9 at some point. I just didn’t have mega pace but at the end with the Safety Car we came back a little bit with the pace and with the restart I knew I needed to do something to get some points.
“So, I risked it a bit, had a crash, but kept going, and that was quite impressive. P5 in the end, good points and good learning for tomorrow’s race.”
Speaking more about his thoughts in the cockpit after colliding with Mansell, Bortoleto explained: “To be honest when I felt the hit I thought race over, so I was quite disappointed for a millisecond.
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“Then I hit the wall and I actually didn’t bounce back with the front, it was just the rear touching the wall and then I kept going. I don’t know what happened, I did something that managed to keep the car going.
“So, I thought ‘okay, it looks okay’. The steering is not on the other side, and hopefully I can do a high-speed corner now and the suspension doesn’t break and I finish in the wall. The lap was completed and from there on it was just about finishing the race and scoring the points.”
Looking ahead to the Feature Race, Bortoleto admits he is expecting another chaotic final few laps but believes that with big points in play tomorrow, the drivers will keep it clean at the start.
He hopes to stay out of trouble once more as his four points scored in the Sprint allowed him to close the gap to 6.5 points to Championship leader Isack Hadjar.
The Campos Racing driver starts in P20 once more and while Bortoleto is hopeful of outscoring his rival again, he pointed to his last-to-first victory in the Monza Feature Race as a reason not to get carried away.
“I mean obviously I want to score as many points as I can,” said Bortoleto. “After today’s race I am more focused on making improvements on the car, making it faster and to probably try to fight for a good position on the podium or anything like this.
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“It’s not going to be easy, there are some quick cars ahead of us but you never know. But as I said I started P22 and won last round, Isack is starting P20 so we cannot predict anything. He is a fast guy and in these types of races anything can happen.
“So, hopefully I can score some good points and he doesn’t score more than me tomorrow. So, let’s see, if we come out of this race as the leader, I will be very happy.”