Jose Manuel Lopez
Audi Salary
Race Engineer to Gabriel Bortoleto
Jose Manuel Lopez's Salary as Bortoleto's Audi Race Engineer
The base salary for Gabriel Bortoleto’s race engineer, Jose Manuel Lopez, is £100k-180k ($133k-239k) on F1 Salaries’ figures for the job. A bonus of £10k-54k ($13k-72k) would bring his year to £110k-234k ($146k-310k).
Searches for his salary also turn up a Palmeiras footballer of the same name, so numbers from those pages don’t apply to the engineer. Audi hasn’t published his pay, and Bortoleto‘s own base of $2m is several times the top of Lopez’s band.
Race engineer pay benchmarks from this survey sit behind Lopez's band and the bonus range on this page.
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What Bortoleto's Race Engineer Does at Audi
Lopez is the voice on Gabriel Bortoleto‘s radio. He coordinates the engineering on the Brazilian’s Audi and turns his technical feedback into changes to the car across a race weekend.
The pair knew each other before Sauber. Lopez was head of F1 testing at McLaren in 2024, when Bortoleto was a McLaren junior, and he mentored him through that season’s test work. He wasn’t Bortoleto’s Formula 2 race engineer, but the link gave their partnership a head start in 2025. Across the garage, Steven Petrik runs Nico Hülkenberg’s car.
Secondary outline of his career at Haas, McLaren, Sauber, and Audi, best read with care on exact dates.
Bortoleto's own account of his McLaren testing years, which is where his working relationship with Lopez began.
Video interview recorded with Lopez during his McLaren years, listed as extra background rather than a fact source.
Guide to every F1 race engineer in 2026, which lists Lopez on Bortoleto's car at Audi.
Lopez Among the Grid's Race Engineers
On £100k-180k ($133k-239k), Lopez is paid like most F1 race engineers, including Andrew Vizard, who engineers Bortoleto’s manager Fernando Alonso at Aston Martin. Will Joseph, his old McLaren colleague on Lando Norris’s car, is on £200k-450k ($265k-596k) because he also directs race engineering there.
Jose Manuel Lopez's F1 Career at Haas, McLaren, and Audi
Haas hired Lopez a year before its first Grand Prix, and five seasons at McLaren followed before Sauber paired him with Bortoleto.
Lopez Beside His Audi Colleagues
Lopez and Steven Petrik run the two cars at Audi on the same £100k-180k ($133k-239k) band. Mattia Binotto tops the team on £2m-5m ($2.7m-6.6m), and sporting director Ignacio Rueda, who works the same race weekends, is on £200k-450k ($265k-596k).
Common Questions About Jose Manuel Lopez
Gabriel Bortoleto’s race engineer is Jose Manuel Lopez. They’ve worked together since Bortoleto’s rookie season with Sauber in 2025 and kept the pairing when the team became Audi for 2026. Lopez is Spanish and joined from McLaren, where he’d spent five years in performance, testing and race engineering jobs.
No, Jose Manuel Lopez wasn’t Bortoleto’s race engineer in Formula 2. He was running McLaren’s F1 testing in 2024, the year Bortoleto won the F2 title, and their link came through McLaren test work and mentoring. Lopez first engineered him in a championship at Sauber in 2025.
Jose Manuel Lopez got to know Bortoleto at McLaren, where the Brazilian was a junior driver and Lopez was head of F1 testing in 2024. He mentored Bortoleto through test sessions that season, and Bortoleto has credited McLaren’s program with helping prepare him for F1.
On F1 Salaries’ figures, José Manuel López earns a base of £100k-180k ($133k-239k), plus a bonus of £10k-54k ($13k-72k). Pages quoting a far bigger salary for that name are usually about the Palmeiras footballer, who’s a different person. Audi hasn’t disclosed the engineer’s pay.
Before Audi, Lopez worked at Haas from 2015, a year before its F1 debut, as a performance engineer for Esteban Gutiérrez and then Kevin Magnussen. He moved to McLaren in 2020, worked on Lando Norris’s car and ran the team’s F1 testing in 2024.