Sauber team principal Jonathan Wheatley revealed he sent a message to McLaren during the race about his driver Gabriel Bortoleto.
McLaren’s Lando Norris caught Bortoleto during the final laps of the race while the Sauber driver was trying to pass Fernando Alonso for seventh place. The time Bortoleto lost being lapped by the race leader thwarted his efforts to pass Alonso.Wheatley revealed he sent a message to McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown during the race hoping to avoid being lapped.
“I was texting Zak and saying ‘don’t un-lap [i.e., lap] us’ during the race because I think we had a better shot with Gabi,” he told Channel 4.
Bortoleto’s inability to pass Alonso did not prevent him scoring the first points of his F1 career with eighth place. Nico Hulkenberg’s ninth place gave Sauber their first double points finish since Wheatley took charge earlier this year.
The former Red Bull sporting director said his new team’s pit stops had been “flawless” and there was “real confidence” at Sauber now. “For me this momentum is what we need at the moment.”
Alonso admitted he had been “a little bit lucky” that Norris caught and lapped Bortoleto when he did. “When Gabi came with a lot better pace, I had Norris with the blue flags and Gabi could not attack me on the last lap.
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“Then the race was one lap shorter because [by] letting Norris go, the next lap we saw the chequered flag. So all in all it was a perfect combo for us.”
The Aston Martin driver, who is also Bortoleto’s manager, was thrilled with his first points finish. “It’s incredible,” said Alonso, “I’m happy for him.
“Gabi was outstanding the whole season. For one reason or other I think Hulkenberg was then scoring the points on Sunday, but I think he deserved maybe before this one to score already points.
“But I hope for him it’s the first of many. First points in Formula 1, they taste always very special.”
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2025 Austrian Grand Prix
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BasCB (@bascb)
1st July 2025, 13:18
Interesting. But Norris was losing a LOT of time behind these guys.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
1st July 2025, 13:19
And hopefully they either ignored the text or replied and told Sauber to .
Jere (@jerejj)
1st July 2025, 14:32
Of course, they ignored, especially since Zak didn’t even attend the Austrian GP.
BinarySlave (@binaryslave)
1st July 2025, 13:34
Zak wasn’t even in Austria!
Jere (@jerejj)
1st July 2025, 14:31
Which is why texting him was all the more useless.
Jere (@jerejj)
1st July 2025, 14:34
Even if Zak Brown were at the Red Bull Ring or Wheatley texted someone on the pit wall, his wish still couldn’t have been granted, given the pace difference & the general requirement to let by at the earliest possible opportunity.
Richard
1st July 2025, 15:05
The I’m not good enough to lap people on my own merit Blue Flag rule prevented viewers from getting to see a good race to the flag between Alonso and Bortoleto. I don’t know that there was enough time for Piastri to actually catch and make a move on Norris in the time remaining. I thought Norris might entertain the idea of just holding back and letting it playout in front of him but he would have had to drop back too much to cancel the stupid Blue Flag rule. You get rid of that rule and there wouldn’t have been any silly texting story. Seriously getting rid of that rule would bring more actual racecraft to the sport. It wouldn’t just be about I have clean air and can qualify fast you would have to be able to maneuver through traffic better than your rival behind you as well.
David (@nvherman)
1st July 2025, 15:47
No, blue flags need to remain: I don’t care how much it affects backmarkers: I don’t want to see race leaders losing their lead because the driver in P2 doesn’t have to take as long to pass them because they’d been woken up when the leader went past. It’s bad enough that DRS exists, without further hampering the driver in front.
AlanD
3rd July 2025, 18:11
David “I don’t want to see race leaders losing their lead because the driver in P2 doesn’t have to take as long to pass them”
In that situation, the race leader loses some of their advantage, but the car in P2 still has to find a way to pass them.
What about when the race leaders pit for fresh tyres and come out behind someone who is slow as a dog on old tyres and hasn’t pitted yet. Blue flags are not applicable because the slower car is, at that point, the race leader.
Jere (@jerejj)
1st July 2025, 18:00
The blue flag was introduced to F1 (& circuit racing generally) for a reason, so dropping it altogether would only bring unintended consequences in the long term.
Unfortunate for Alonso & Bortoleto, but their teams are ultimately responsible for failing to produce a car fast enough to remain within the lead lap throughout the race distance on short circuits, especially the one where lapping around takes less time than on any other current circuit.
Oppositely, the circuit where lapping around takes more time than anywhere else, i.e., Spa-Francorchamps, is unlikely to feature any lapping this year either, even if the race runs entirely uninterruptedly from lights out to chequered flag, so similarly close battles on the final few laps won’t get spoiled due to the eventual winner catching up to within the blue-flag system’s trigger range unless the drivers in question suffer more than one lengthy pit stop each.
Lapping will inevitably always remain a thing, especially for short circuits, as long as F1 doesn’t become a full-blown spec series.
anon
1st July 2025, 19:48
Richard, Formula 1 used to use the blue flag to signify that drivers should get out of the way back in the 1950s, and people don’t say that drivers like Fangio were incompetent racers because of that.
AlanD
3rd July 2025, 17:46
“Formula 1 used to use the blue flag to signify that drivers should get out of the way back in the 1950s”
Are you sure about that? Motor racing has had blue flags for as long as I can remember, but I thought back then that it was a warning to the driver that a faster car was coming up behind them,…. a warning, not an instruction. It was about the 1990s when the rules in F1 started to change, and even then I am pretty sure that it was something like drivers should let the car behind through if they passed three waved blues in succession. Certainly drivers like Senna had an uncanny knack of carving through backmarkers, and this ability to overtake was an important part of the F1 champion’s skill set, as was the ability to position your car to take advantage of the inability of the driver in front to cleanly pass backmarkers.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
1st July 2025, 19:00
Yet all of the team principals except Mercedes didn’t say a peep when the field was only unlapped between HAM and VER. The race this past weekend showed more racing in the midfield but the midfield was completely ignored for the show a few years ago.
Palindnilap (@palindnilap)
1st July 2025, 21:30
Reminiscence of Abu Dhabi 2021 anyone ? Wheatley seems to have made a motto of “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no”.
AlanD
3rd July 2025, 18:35
Am I the only one who thinks it is contrary to sporting principles for two teams to collude in this way to disadvantage another driver or team? Isn’t this explicitly against the rules? Rememeber the outcry when Ricciardo took the fastest lap point awat from Norris and people wanted to know if that was possbile collusion between Red Bull and RB? Surely this is even more blatant. Shouldn’t the FIA be investigating Sauber for this?