Young Audi driver Gabriel Bortoleto played a prank on his team-mate Nico Hulkenberg as the pair walked out in front of thousands of fans at the Circuit of the Americas. With both drivers walking out to cheers from the Austin crowds, the Brazilian pulled down his team-mate's trousers.
Videos of this moment have gone incredibly viral, showing Hulkenberg making his way onto the stage on Friday when Bortoleto grabbed his trousers from behind and pulled them down, to loud cheers and laughter from the crowd. The German took the joke in good humour, laughing as he pulled his clothes straight.
The prank offered some light relief on a tough weekend for Bortoleto. The Brazilian will start Sunday’s United States Grand Prix from the back of the grid, after Audi took him beyond his allocation of power unit components.
Bortoleto and Hulkenberg have been team-mates since 2025, when the team still raced as Sauber, and have formed one of the more light-hearted partnerships on the grid despite it being taken over by German giant Audi. The outfit has found points hard to come by in 2026, however. The team is eighth in the constructors’ championship on 23 points, with the experienced Hulkenberg on 13 and Bortoleto on 10.
"I have seen lots of improvement on reliability," Bortoleto said on Thursday ahead of the United States Grand Prix race weekend. "I think we had one [issue] in Singapore obviously, that we believe we found the reason of.
"It was obviously something not ideal to happen, but at the same time it happened when I was not really fighting at the front, so made me a little bit less upset about it. But I hope we are able to do the rest of the season without having any major issue and that we are able to just complete the races and qualifying in the best condition and the best car possible out there that we can drive and extract everything from it."