2022 mid-season driver ranking part 2: 15-11 · RaceFans

The second part of RaceFans’ mid-season driver rankings covers the drivers in the lower middle end of the table.

15 – Zhou Guanyu – Alfa Romeo

As the only rookie on the Formula 1 grid for 2022 and having been awarded a race seat over the driver who beat him for last year’s Formula 2 title – Oscar Piastri – there was always going to be an extra level of scrutiny over Zhou Guanyu this season.

However, while the rookie class of 2021 all had major struggles at various stages in their first campaigns in Formula 1, Zhou has acquitted himself fairly admirably by comparison. It’s hard to think of any major mistakes or embarrassing blunders made by China’s first ever Formula 1 race driver over his first 13 races so far. Even his lowlight of the season, a horrific accident at the start of the British Grand Prix, was entirely out of his control.

Zhou benefited from his Alfa Romeo being quick from the start of the season, taking a point on his grand prix debut in Bahrain. He was not the best qualifier at the start of the year, often lining up multiple rows behind team mate Valtteri Bottas, but his talent for scything his way up the field quickly earned him praise from his Alfa Romeo team for his racecraft.

Bottas collected decent points over the first part of the season and Zhou struggled to back up his team mate’s haul. But he was not helped by multiple technical failures that took him out of races in Miami, Barcelona, Baku and Paul Ricard, where he was technically classified. Zhou has suffered more mechanical retirements than any of his peers so far this season.

When Alfa Romeo began to lose ground in the pecking order, Zhou’s form seemed to pick up. He reached Q3 for the first time in a wet Montreal while Bottas was eliminated, before taking his second points finish the day after. He took ninth on the grid in Silverstone before his retirement, but Paul Ricard was perhaps his sloppiest weekend, missing the Q1 cut with a mistake, losing four places at the start and earning a penalty for spinning Mick Schumacher.

His critics might have grounds to point to the points deficit between Zhou and Bottas, but that alone does not tell the whole story of a driver who has shown he is more than competent in a Formula 1 car. If Schumacher and Yuki Tsunoda deserved second seasons after their…