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The one thing that will hold him back compared to the other rookies is his lack of F1 testing. Kimi had a small army of engineers and old cars at his disposal all year, Bearman did 3 races and a shit-load of FP1s, Lawson has 11 races and a whole bunch of other tests under his belt and Doohan also has done a lot of testing for Alpine.
Hadjar also hasn't had a lot of testing, with only 4 FPs between 2023 and 2024, but Bortoleto has even less than that. I think he did the post season for Sauber and a private test for McLaren, that's it.
I really hope he'll be able to overcome this in the first half of the season or so.
If he manages to match or stay within 0.2 of Nico most races and weathers out 2026, I can see him getting a chance at taking Fernando's seat for 2027 with hopefully a banger car by Newey.
If Aston produce an amazing car in 2026+ with Adrian, I can't imagine Fernando voluntarily leaving. He's been waiting so long for his another win, let alone another championship fight. And if he's fired, I can't imagine Aston/Lawrence going for a driver who will have only been in F1 for 2 years if Lance wants to stick around.
Especially since Gabriel won't have anywhere near the amount of testing/F1 car experience that fellow 2026 rookies like Kimi or Ollie do. And rookies these days already get so much less testing, I don't know if he'll be ready to lead Astonbecause Lance sure as hell isn't
Lance is painfully mid at best, so they'll want someone with more oomph (or at least experience) as his teammate to balance it. Especially with Honda, Newey, top of the line facilities,etc. If they have a banger car in the new regs, then they can attract someone like Max.
If Max sticks with Redbull and if Gabriel does well next year, I could actually imagine them on the same team. They're both part of Team Redline and Max calls him Bubbles, they already get along well. And Max is already Redbull's star driver, so they just need a solid driver in the other seat who won't piss him off, and even better if he's a promising future WDC level driver
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