Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu endured another weekend without scoring any points. He and teammate Valtteri Bottas were knocked out in the Q1 heading into Sunday’s race, with the Chinese driver slowest of all and almost a second off the pace of the Finn.
The team made a tactical decision to change both of their rear wings overnight, a Parc Fermé infringement that meant both cars had to start from the pit lane.
However, the team left Canada with their scoreless streak still intact, with the Chinese driver finishing P15, a lap down on the rest of the field. He was not helped by having a very slow second stop.
“To be honest, not really [great] this race. I’m just struggling with across all different compounds. But of course after the half of the race, I was a little bit out of the race anyway. So a bit of a lonely one.
“But we have something already planned in the factory to make sure we’re starting a little bit more from scratch.”
He was left puzzled by the past two weekends — Monaco and Canada — and noted that nothing seems to click for the Hinwil-based team and his Sauber C44 car.
“These two weekends, I feel like something’s just not clicking right. Like this whole weekend, all those mistakes it never happened before. So yeah, we’re trying to understand all the issue and having some plans for the next race.
“[The car] feels everywhere to be honest, four-wheel sliding. So there’s not a massive limitation but just lacking of grip. It’s quite simple in a way but not the easy one to be getting any progress.”
He continued by claiming the team was trying to do something different to understand any way to get more grip out of the cars. However, the experiment proved to be frustrating as the team concluded that the new rear wing wasn’t the issue.
“We’ve tried something different to understand if we can find a little more grip from what we have. In the end I think, the rear wings is definitely not the issue, so one thing’s been cleared.”
The former F2 driver went on to explain that the trip to North America wasn’t easy for his side of the garage. The Chinese driver even went as far as to label this year’s Canadian Grand Prix as one of the worst weekends he ever had.
As well as his lack of pace, he crashed at turn 5 in FP1, with another following at turn 2 in FP3 as he struggled to find any confidence in his car.
“Yeah I mean, it’s obviously just being one of these weekends. It’s not been easy, especially I think on my side of the garage. Definitely one the worst weekends I ever had.
“I’m of course not feeling confident this whole weekend, so that’s why we’re planning to check everything in the factory making sure that we can get the confidence level [high], and knowing what I can do.”
Zhou Guanyu argued that the lack of speed from the C44 and struggling to drive the car greatly affects how much the team can achieve.
“The last ones have been really tricky ones. Over the last two or three race weekends, as a team in general we’ve been struggling.
“It’s just not an easy season at all. [We’re] facing different topic of issue. But now, I’m just hoping that we can just clear things up and showing my potential, because I feel like the pace I showed this weekend is not what I could do.
“I was purely under driving the whole thing. Every time I try to push, something just happens [afterwards].“
Sauber remains at the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship after another scoreless weekend for the team.
Zhou Guanyu himself is now in 19th in the Drivers’ Championship without any points, but is ahead of teammate Valtteri Bottas and Logan Sargeant due to his best result of P11 in Bahrain.
