EXCLUSIVE: Zhou Guanyu on Sauber struggles, F1 dreams and regrets

For Zhou Guanyu, the 2024 F1 season has been mixed. It has been a year in which he achieved his childhood dreams, but also faces an uncertain future.

It would be easy to look at this year’s results on paper and come to the conclusion that Zhou has not done enough to warrant a seat for 2025, having failed to score a single point with a best finish of 11th only once.

But paper alone rarely tells the full story.

Sauber’s car is the slowest on the 2024 grid and has proven a handful to drive - an unhelpful combination when it comes to trying to fairly evaluate driver performance.

“It’s been a tough season,” F1’s first Chinese driver said to Crash.net. “A big struggle with several different issues in different periods of the season.

“Once everything has kind of settled down then we lack some car performance, unfortunately. The car we had this year requires a different driving style which I try to get a better improvement on, but it’s not an easy short-term fix.”

The need to make changes to his driving style has particularly hurt Zhou over one lap in qualifying.

“For the one lap, to try to change my driving style is not something that is quite easy to do,” he explained. “But in a race, I’m able to adapt that quite straightforward from the beginning.

“The window - for the balance, for the tyres to work - is such a small window that everything has to be perfect to be able to extract [the best out of] the car. Otherwise, we just seem to be lacking overall grip.

“I’m a bit more aggressive and love to have the car fighting a little bit on the edge. But with the current car, if I am too aggressive, it unsettles the balance too much. So that’s kind of put me a little bit on the back foot for qualifying.”

F1 drivers have and always will be limited by the quality of the machinery at their disposal. For Zhou, this has been true for three seasons, with his capabilities masked by uncompetitive and, at times, unreliable cars.

On the whole, the 25-year-old has performed credibly in F1. He is usually close to Valtteri Bottas - a highly experienced winner of 10 grands prix and 20-time pole position holder - on pace. Zhou is consistent, makes minimal mistakes, and has suffered from his share of bad luck over the years.

Zhou candidly opened up about his regrets and frustrations over his far-from-straightforward stint in F1 in which he has amassed 12 points from 60 grand prix starts.

“Of course I have some regrets, you always feel like you do,” he admitted.

“I don’t feel I’ve had the most smooth seasons up until this point. I even feel like the first year I had a lot of chances going away by technical issues and then this year is the fact of where we stand and you have to accept that.

“Last year, I felt like I was giving it my all and felt like everything was coming along together but then I was a little frustrated because this year you expect everything to do another step better but then it went a bit backwards. I hoped I could have had some better results in races where I had a better chance.”

Perhaps the biggest example of an opportunity that went begging through misfortune came at last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

Zhou had managed his best F1 qualifying effort to line up fifth on the grid, but found himself swallowed up by the pack after a bizarre start problem caused a sluggish getaway. Contact with Daniel Ricciardo exacerbated the pain for Zhou, who ultimately finished a lapped 16th. 

Without the issue, a best-ever result could have been on the cards.

“That one was disappointing,” Zhou recollected. “But things like that always happen in racing. I’m just grateful to have a chance here and to have a platform where I’m able to represent a Chinese driver in this sport.”

Zhou is the first to admit he is not happy with how his 2024 campaign has panned out. While neither Sauber driver has got off the mark, he trails teammate Bottas 11-5 on race day, and 15-1 in qualifying (sprint results not included).

“This year I am not so happy,” he acknowledged. “Towards mid-season before the summer break, I could do a better job myself.

“I think there’s some mistakes, or in qualifying I wasn’t able to give it [my] all. But obviously I have that limitation of trying to adapt my driving style so sometimes the mistakes are happening. This side I think I can do a better job.

“Apart from that, I think the last two-and-a-half seasons I was able to gradually gain some performance and improve, which I’m happy with. But this season is a mixed feeling with everything.”

Zhou is in a fight to save his F1 career, knowing there is at least one other driver in direct competition for the sole-remaining seat at Sauber. Two into one simply does not go, leaving Zhou in real danger of missing out altogether.

If this is to be it for Zhou in F1, an emotional and historic homecoming at the Chinese Grand Prix earlier this year will forever remain a standout memory.

“I think the career highlight will definitely be the first grand prix [Bahrain 2022],” Zhou said. “To score points on my debut was something I dreamed of, or something I couldn’t have imagined. So it was an honour to do that.

“The Chinese Grand Prix was like having a childhood dream within F1 that comes true. Obviously F1 is a dream but then to be racing at home where everything started, that was the Chinese Grand Prix back in 2004.

“20 years later to finally be representing that, that was another dream aside from F1 that I achieved that day. It was so crazy. The crowd and the atmosphere was there for me. I definitely can’t ever forget that day.”