Despite being catapulted into the air at 240km/h at the start of the British Grand Prix, flipping upside down and vaulting a barrier, Zhou Guanyu’s thoughts soon turned to getting back behind the wheel.
“On Sunday night I was texting my engineers asking ‘is my seat okay?” the Alfa Romeo rookie explained. “Obviously the engine takes a bit of time but for the drivers, the seats are very important, very comfortable, so I don’t want to change something.”
Happily his seat was salvaged, and a week later Zhou finished 14th at the Red Bull Ring.
“I was quite happy to have a back-to-back race,” he said. “If I had a summer break just after that [crash], that would be terrible because you would be asking the questions and you’d be thinking about it, repeated questions… even though you try to avoid it, you somehow find it somewhere.”
Until the shocking events of Silverstone, Zhou had made a solid start to his career at the pinnacle of motorsport. He arrived in F1 after finishing third in Formula 2 with Virtuosi last year.
Once a Ferrari Driver Academy member, Zhou moved to Renault’s junior programme, which became Alpine. But with Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon occupying both their F1 seats for 2022, Zhou landed a drive at Alfa Romeo instead, and is the only rookie on the grid this year.
Inevitably, some suggested Alfa Romeo swooped to signed the first Chinese driver to race in F1 in the hopes of a sales boost in his homeland. It was widely noted that his fellow Alpine junior Oscar Piastri won the F2 title at his first attempt last year but has been overlooked for promotion to F1.
However Zhou made a dream start to his first season by picking up a point in Bahrain. He came close to doing the same at the next two rounds, finishing 11th in Jeddah and Melbourne.
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Unreliability has been a persistent problem for Alfa Romeo, however, and it bit Zhou hard over the coming races. He posted three retirements due to technical trouble in four rounds.
He was forced to retire from the Miami Grand Prix after a water leak just 10 minutes into the race. His team mate Valtteri Bottas finished seventh, leaving Zhou ruing a missed opportunity.
His car gave up again in Spain, pulling off the track on lap 29 in Barcelona, as he had been poised to pounce on a top 10 finish. More reliability woes struck in Baku where Zhou, once more running in the top 10, received a radio message from his team asking him to retire the…
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