Who should get the second Sauber F1 2025 seat? Our writers have their say
Although there are technically still a couple of seats available on the 2025 Formula 1 grid, only the second spot at Sauber is really up for grabs.
The team, which will become Audi in 2026, has already picked Nico Hulkenberg for next season, but there are still several contenders vying for the second cockpit.
Our writers offer their views on who the team should select to partner the German.
Colapinto showed he’s ready for it – Mark Manns-Bryan
Franco Colapinto would be a brave and eye-catching shout from Audi but it would also be a move that makes perfect sense as the manufacturer prepares to complete its full takeover of the Sauber team in 2026.
The Argentinian has shown in just two Formula 1 races that he can compete, can recover from errors any rookie driver could make and also that he is able to score points, something Sauber has not managed yet in the 2024 season.
Franco Colapinto, Williams Racing
Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images
He jumped into the Williams with almost no notice and drove well at Monza, backing that up at another difficult track in Baku, where he broke Alex Albon’s 50-race streak of outqualifying his team-mate.
Colapinto then drove a smart race, making his strategy and tyres work before taking advantage of the late crash between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez to claim his first world championship points.
A team also needs a balanced driver line-up and there is little doubt that Colapinto would benefit hugely from pairing up with the much more experienced Nico Hulkenberg, while also playing the role of keeping the German honest and on his toes in a similar manner to what we saw from Oliver Bearman alongside Hulkenberg in the Haas in Baku.
The timing would also work in Colapinto’s favour, having a year to develop as an F1 driver under the Sauber banner before the real spotlight is shone on the squad when it takes on the Audi branding.
Off the track, the fervour around Colapinto’s promotion into F1 has been incredible as Argentinian fans – and those across Latin America on the whole – have thrown their weight behind the 21-year-old and would no doubt latch onto the Audi team to follow their new hero.
The same could also be said of Argentinian backers, with both Globant and Mercado Libre joining Williams since the announcement Colapinto would take Logan Sargeant’s seat.
Audi should prepare for the future with Bortoleto – Jake Boxall-Legge
Few would argue against the statement that George Russell, Charles Leclerc, and Oscar Piastri are all drivers of the highest calibre. All race winners, also share an achievement in common: they won both F2 and GP3/F3 in their first and only seasons in each category. Gabriel Bortoleto, after assuming the drivers’ championship lead in Baku, is on track to repeat that achievement if he ends the season in the same vein of form.
Gabriel Bortoleto, Invicta Racing
Photo by: Invicta Virtuosi Racing
Perhaps Bortoleto has gone under the radar, particularly as the likes of Ollie Bearman and Andrea Kimi Antonelli have all courted the limelight this season. That’s maybe worked in his favour, as it’s meant that he can quietly learn on the job with F2’s new machinery and start progressing without the distractions that some of his counterparts face.
However, the McLaren junior certainly looks to be a real talent, blending consistency with a never-say-die attitude that has carried him to two feature race wins this year. Of those, the Monza victory from last on the grid was supremely impressive; sure, it was helped by the safety car timing, but F2’s capricious nature can giveth as much as taketh away.
Note the Melbourne round, for example; Bortoleto could hold a healthier margin over Isack Hadjar had the Frenchman not knocked him out of the running in the Albert Park sprint, or had his hydraulics not caused a retirement in the full-points feature race.
Sauber already has experience in one car, in Nico Hulkenberg. And, as much as it would be a loss to see Valtteri Bottas out of a seat, the scythe’s remorseless swing is of benefit to the younger generation. Why not prepare for the future with a rookie – and one whose junior record has been demonstrably successful?
McLaren would let him go from its junior programme if a race seat presented itself, and Bortoleto’s manager Fernando Alonso was effusive in his praise of the Brazilian driver – stating that “it’s a matter of time that he gets to F1”. Perhaps that time should be now…
Stop ignoring Pourchaire – Oleg Karpov
You’ve got to applaud James Vowles. The move to replace Logan Sargeant with Franco Colapinto wasn’t exactly straightforward, to say the least, but it paid off – with Colapinto making Vowles look like a genius after just two races. And that’s probably something the Sauber (well, Audi) bosses really need to think about.
It’s not just Vowles. More and more teams are starting to trust their own young drivers. Toto Wolff will have two guys next year that he started backing years before they appeared on the F1 radar. Lando Norris was a McLaren junior long before he came to F1. Ditto for Charles Leclerc and Ferrari. Now Alpine has decided to give Jack Doohan a chance.
Theo Pourchaire, Reserve Driver, Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
What is puzzling is how little attention Theo Pourchaire gets at Sauber. Maybe we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, but from the outside, you get the impression that the project bosses will only be reminded of him after they’ve heard “no, thank you” from at least a dozen more drivers.
The desire to sign Carlos Sainz was understandable, but waiting so long and missing out on a couple of other good options probably contributed to Andreas Seidl and Oliver Hoffmann losing their jobs.
Retaining Valtteri Bottas is definitely a decent option, but the fact that Nico Hulkenberg was signed before him for 2025 says a lot about how much the previous regime at least valued the Finn. But to look at Gabriel Bortoleto and even Franco Colapinto is just baffling.
Why would a team even consider loaning a young driver from another squad when it has its own Formula 2 champion on the bench?
Yes, much has been said about how unimpressive Pourchaire’s 2023 title campaign was. Indeed, it was his third year in the series. His qualifyings weren’t stunning and he only won one race. Yet it’s almost forgotten that Pourchaire was only 20 when he clinched the F2 title. He was rushed through the junior ladder and it’s almost as if it worked against him in the end.
We’re not bothered by the fact that Alex Albon hasn’t won an F2 title in his two years in the series. We have all the excuses for Doohan not to have won it either. And we’re not really bothered by the fact that Oliver Bearman’s 2024 F2 campaign – his second in the series – is simply poor. But Bearman got his chance to shine in Abu Dhabi – and that’s probably what earned him his Haas drive.
What Pourchaire needs is an opportunity. And giving him one can only be good for Audi. If it is serious about becoming a top team, then the manufacturer can’t do without its own junior programme – and the word around the paddock is that this is what Allan McNish has been busy with lately.
Giving Pourchaire a chance – not Audi’s junior, but still Sauber’s – could actually show these young and promising karters that they are not only willing to support talent but also trust it.
Bottas is the safe choice – Alex Kalinauckas
Hear me out. Sauber/Audi should keep Valtteri Bottas to race alongside Nico Hulkenberg next year.
Just take a look at Hulkenberg’s current squad to see why. Haas has made massive progress since its decision to reset with two rookies in 2021. Much of that has been down to management, team process and car design focus change.
But the role of experienced pros cannot be undervalued in that exact massive (re)building job Audi has. It needs drivers that know the limit, not rookies still finding it and the crash-damage bills with which that search always comes.
Valtteri Bottas, Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber
Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images
Sometimes you’ve just got to live relentlessly in the real world to make the sea-change progress Audi needs to make good on its potential in 2026. Bottas can provide exactly the experience it needs and, let’s not forget, this is a driver Lewis Hamilton couldn’t tame in qualifying during their time together as team-mates at Mercedes.
And then there’s Bottas’s style. Among the robotic PR lines, younger drivers need to spout endlessly to have one less thing to worry about when they enter the fiery F1 media landscape, his “f***s-only-given-in-cryptic-post-victory-point-making” attitude is exactly what’s needed to prick endless F1 pomposity. The innocuous ‘second screen factor’ of all sports these days will be much diminished if Bottas and his lookalikes are absent.
The championship is also going to be utterly Antipodean with all those Australian drivers on the grid next year – plus New Zealand’s Liam Lawson in the mix too. It’d be odd to start off such an era without F1’s best honorary Aussie when the lights go out in Melbourne in March 2025…
