The Austrian Grand Prix was another weekend without points for Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu who finished twentieth in Saturday’s sprint and seventeenth in Sunday’s race.
Speaking after the race, the 25-year-old discussed the lap 20 incident which saw him being punted off the track by Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso up at turn 3. The Chinese driver had not boxed and was getting overtaken by drivers on much fresher tyres, including Daniel Ricciardo just before the incident happened. He claimed he had tried to give Alonso space but had still been knocked off the track.
He added that this collision, for which Alonso was given a ten-second time penalty, had caused significant damage to his car and that this had affected his overall performance.
However, Zhou admitted that the car had been lacking pace throughout the weekend.
“I mean, honestly, I was together with another car [Ricciardo], and then suddenly I saw Alonso trying to take the chance of overtaking the other car he was racing with.
“But I opened the door, and still, I got massively hit in the apex, so yeah.
“The car was quite damaged afterwards, especially on the right-hand side. Not sure exactly where, but I just feel [like] it was quite a struggle.
“But the whole weekend, we just didn’t really have the pace.”
In light of his admission of his struggle with the car’s pace, he was asked whether he had seen any improvements in his and the team’s overall understanding of the C44.
The Sauber driver stated while the team understood the car’s weaknesses, they faced issues regarding their updates, especially as the car had been very sensitive in certain conditions.
As an example of the conditions under which the car struggled, he highlighted the relatively hot temperatures at the Red Bull Ring, which he said, had affected the lap times that could be produced.
“I mean, we understand where is the weakness. It’s very clear. But the issue is, how we solve or what new parts we need to bring or we have to bring in order to bring more performance on the table, because obviously we had a similar car since many races ago.
“And it’s not been that easy this season in general, and the car, of course, this year, is very sensitive in certain conditions.
“Yesterday with the hot temperatures, we’re just struggling a lot with the tyre management.”
When asked whether he was frustrated with the lack of car speed given his current contract situation, Zhou Guanyu stated that he was not thinking about whether he would be leaving or staying with the team at the end of the season as his priority was improving his performance, especially as Sauber appears to be one of the teams with a larger performance variation between different tracks.
In Spain the previous weekend, both cars made Q2, with the driver from Shanghai finishing a strong P13 in the race.
“I mean, I’m not thinking about where I’m heading [to] or whether I’m staying for next season, because for me, we just need to get back to the performance, because in Spain we find the performance back. But here, we lost everything.
“And I don’t think it’s a big worry just because of the track layout, but we seem to be one of the teams that has a bigger offset between different tracks.”
Zhou Guanyu, who currently sits 19th in the 2024 driver’s championship, with zero points from eleven feature and three sprint races, is out of contract at the end of the 2024 season.
