In the round-up: Alfa Romeo team principal Xevi Pujolar says rookie Zhou Guanyu exceeded the team’s expectations in his first race following his debut points score.
In brief
Guanyu “better than guys with a lot of experience” in debut F1 raceGuanyu impressed his team at the second pre-season test, Pujolar explained: “We already saw that, in terms of managing the long stints, he was very strong. Once we instructed him on what to do, how to do it, he was able to execute it.”
But the team was eager to see whether he could replicate that pace in a race. “We had the question mark: will he be able to replicate that when he’s in a fighting scenario? One thing is to do it when you are on your own, but then when you are in a crisis scenario, when you’re fighting with other people, it’s not the same.”
Despite losing ground at the start in Sunday’s race, Guanyu recovered to pick up a point on his debut. “He did exactly the same job, I will say even better than last week…