Until a few days ago, Bortolotti was seen as a potential replacement for Spanish driver Jaime Alguersuari in the Toro Rosso lineup for the 2010 Formula One championsip. Now, according to Turun Sanomat correspondent Heikki Kulta who is these days present at the Ferrari's Wrooom event at the Madonna di Campiglio ski resort, the Italian driver was ousted with immediate effect from Red Bull's programme by the team's advisor Helmut Marko.
Marko is the man who takes care of developing new talented drivers for the Red Bull organization and is known to be rather difficult to work with by the majority of the drivers. However, as tough a teacher as he may be, his reputation inside the F1 paddock is close to impeccable.
If the aforementioned report turns out to be true, Bortolotti might also lose his seat in the F2 championship, as his previous commitment had been arranged by Red Bull. If he won't find a solution to this problem, he'll likely return to university and continue his studies.
His career would therefore take an unexpected turn following his great success in the past year. He impressed everyone at Ferrari in his first outing on a Ferrari F1 car, as he broke the Fiorano circuit record last winter. Also, he tested for Toro Rosso in the Jerez rookie testing session last month and did pretty good, considering the package he had to drive. Last year, he ended the inaugural F2 series in 4th place overall.
One reason that would make us believe this latest reports is that Bortolotti is not listed as a Red Bull Junior Team driver anymore. According to the team's site, the team's racers for 2010 are Brendon Hartley and Daniel Ricciardo. Oh, and one more thing... Bortolotti's 20th birthday happened 3 days ago.
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