2025 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix – Friday

Imola, 16 May 2025 – Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber made a solid start to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix weekend, with both cars showing promising pace in Friday’s free practice sessions.

FP1 was brought to an early end when Gabriel went off at Rivazza, but the damage was limited and allowed the team to quickly fix his car ahead of the afternoon session. FP2 ran smoothly, allowing both drivers to log valuable mileage and collect important data for the engineers to analyse ahead of tomorrow’s final practice and qualifying sessions.
 

Nico Hulkenberg (car number 27):
FP1: 10th / 1:16.998 (23 laps)
FP2: 19th / 1:16.419 (26 laps)

“It’s been a solid Friday for me: we ran through our planned program without any issues. The car’s balance feels reasonably good, but there’s still room to improve in terms of overall pace. We’ll be going through today’s data to see where we can fine-tune the set-up, which is especially important on a compact and technical circuit like Imola. With the performance gap between teams so tight, even small adjustments can have a big impact in qualifying.”

 

Gabriel Bortoleto (car number 5):
FP1: 9th / 1:16.925 (23 laps)
FP2: 16th / 1:16.339 (27 laps)

“The day started off well. I was feeling comfortable in the car, pushing to find the limit and maintaining a strong pace over the long run. Unfortunately, I had a small snap — and as we said before the weekend, this track doesn’t leave much room for mistakes. I tried to correct it and did manage to do so, but unfortunately it was just a bit too late. Luckily, the car went in straight, so the damage was minor and we were able to fix it after the session — I would like to say thank you to all the mechanics for promptly sorting it out. FP2 ran smoothly, everything felt good again, and we were able to pick up right where we left off and continue gathering valuable data for tomorrow.”