2025 Qatar Grand Prix – Saturday

KICK Sauber F1 Team experienced a tightly fought Saturday at the Qatar Grand Prix, with a steady Sprint Race in the afternoon followed by a close qualifying session under the floodlights at Lusail.

In the Sprint, Gabriel Bortoleto made up two positions off the line to finish just outside the top ten in P11, while Nico Hulkenberg brought the second C45 home in P16 after an uneventful race in tricky midfield traffic.

In yet another qualifying defined by small margins, Nico missed out on a spot in Q3 by just three thousandths of a second, a gap equivalent to only 23.75 centimetres at 285 km/h, underlining just how close the field was in tonight’s session. He will line up just outside the top ten for tomorrow’s race.

Gabriel progressed solidly through the session to secure the 14th fastest time in qualifying. However, due to a five-place grid penalty carried over from an incident in Las Vegas, the Brazilian will start tomorrow’s race from 19th on the grid.

With both drivers showing promising performance, the team now turns its full focus to race execution, strategy and making the most of the given opportunities under the lights in Qatar.

Jonathan Wheatley, Team Principal: “While today’s Sprint was rather uneventful for us, seeing Gabi finishing in P11 after making up two positions at the start, and Nico in P16, Qualifying was much more positive. I was particularly pleased with how the pitwall executed throughout the session, placing the cars in the right windows in traffic and managing the run plans cleanly. We had an encouraging start with both cars moving comfortably into Q2. Nico delivered very clean laps and missed out on Q3 by only 0.003 seconds, finishing P11. Gabi didn’t quite manage to perfectly execute his laps, and with the five-place grid penalty he carries from Las Vegas, he will start the race from P19.

“There is still everything to play for tomorrow. We need to finish ahead of our main competitors in what is a very tight battle in the Constructors’ Championship, and with limitations on tyre life, it might be an interesting race.”

Nico Hulkenberg (car number 27):

Sprint: 16th

Fastest Lap: 1:25.678 (Lap 5)

Strategy: Start (Medium Used)

Q1: 1:20.630 (11 laps)

02: 11th/ 1:20.353 (9 laps)

“It was a clean qualifying session for us: I’m relatively happy with the laps and the effort we put in, although it’s frustrating to miss out on Q3 for just three thousandths of a second. The margins were incredibly fine and that time was probably out there somewhere. Still, we are on the edge of the top ten and we have an extra set of soft tyres for tomorrow’s race: we’ve seen this morning, in the Sprint, how difficult overtaking can be, but we are competitive and we’re around cars we can fight.”

Gabriel Bortoleto (car number 5):

Sprint: 11th

Fastest Lap: 1:25.663 (Lap 4)

Strategy: Start (Medium Used)

Q1: 1:20.653 (11 laps)

02: 14th/1:20.534 (9 laps)

“The Sprint went quite okay for us. I gained two positions at the start, had a solid launch, and the pace felt decent, so I was pretty satisfied with that. Qualifying was a bit more challenging: I pushed a little too hard, ran slightly wide, and that was enough to cost me the lap. The rest of it wasn’t too bad, but it definitely wasn’t ideal. Tomorrow I’ll be starting P19 with the penalty from Las Vegas, so it won’t be an easy job. It’s a long race though, and we’ll take what we learned today and try to move forward up the grid.”