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Zhou Guanyu acknowledges that the 2024 season has been challenging for both Sauber and himself, largely due to persistent car problems. In an exclusive interview with Sportskeeda at Zandvoort ahead of the 2024 Dutch Grand Prix, the Chinese F1 driver admitted that he has struggled to adapt his driving style, which has impacted his qualifying performance since the start of the year.
This season has been particularly difficult for Zhou Guanyu as he has struggled to perform at a competitive level. While he was able to match former Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas in qualifying during 2023, this year has been a different story. The Shanghai-born driver has been out-qualified by Bottas at all race weekends so far. However, he has managed to outperform his teammate in race performance on five of those weekends, showing some resilience amidst the struggles.
While chatting with Sportskeeda in the Sauber team motorhome, Zhou Guanyu provided an honest evaluation of his performance. He acknowledged that his difficulty in adapting his driving style to the car has significantly impacted his qualifying results. With the car suffering from its issues, Sauber remains one of the few teams yet to score a point this season. Zhou believes that the team's focus for the remaining ten races should be on resolving the car's various problems and his focus remains to adapt his driving style to the car.
When asked about his approach and expectations for the rest of the season, the 25-year-old said:
"I think for me, it's a matter of trying to score some points, because obviously we're trying to fight for top time, fighting for podiums and so on. So I think the reality of the season has been really tricky before the summer break. I'm just hoping that we can clear things off. And also especially from my side I think in Spa, we had multiple issues, that we couldn't finish the race where the potential was quite high. I had a good feeling the first couple laps. Yeah, let's see things how it goes. I don't think it can get much worse than the first part. As a team we are having different issues and difficulties. So, yeah, hopefully that now we can have a very straightforward next 10 races and get back to where I think it's the whole team we belong to.”
Discussing specific areas where he has struggled this year, Guanyu explained:
“This year was quite clear in qualifying performances. I'm struggling quite a lot and I mean it's the fact so I don't want to. I need to adapt a little bit of my driving style and it's a bit more sensitive with everything and with my driving style, it kind of pays a bit more price on that. So I'm trying to change that and trying to adjust the way, how I drive. But yeah, that's probably the weakness I felt the first part of the season and want to get a change from my side especially because it's impossible to change the car. I don't want to change the whole car and I just want to improve my driving, try to be a bit more adapting with what we have.”
Zhou Guanyu feels that Sauber's lack of points so far doesn't create additional pressure for the next ten races
Despite Sauber's lack of points so far, Zhou Guanyu doesn't feel pressured heading into the second half of the season. He pointed out that the Hinwil-based team has faced several challenges, including pit stop issues and other minor performance problems. Unlike rivals such as Haas or Visa Cashapp RB, the Swiss team has not built the most competitive car. Zhou believes the team lacks overall consistency and needs to focus on refining the finer details to achieve a significant improvement in on-track performance.
When asked if Sauber's lack of points in 2024 added more pressure on him to perform going into the remaining races after the summer break, Zhou Guanyu responded:
“I think I wouldn't say, because we haven't scored points, we have more pressure. I think scoring points or not is, it's kind of just a format of how, you know, we're prepared and how we build up into the season. And I think the first part of the season, we're clearly not as good enough to be fighting for top 10. And once we had a chance at the beginning of the season, we had a few pitstop issues. And then when we solved that of course, we went a little bit backwards on the car performance. So it's a matter of, to be there every single weekend, which we missed, the consistency as a whole team, that's why we're not there. So yeah we're fixing all the other problems and you know all those little details makes a and end of the day the big switching around on track. So hopefully things are in a much better shape.”
Currently, Sauber sits at the bottom of the constructors' standings, with Williams and Alpine as their closest rivals. Williams has scored four points, while Alpine has accumulated 11. Zhou Guanyu's main focus is to impress his current employers to secure his spot for the 2025 season when the team will be rebranded as the Audi F1 team. In his three seasons with Sauber, the former F3 Asia champion has yet to outperform Valtteri Bottas consistently. Having finished 18th in the drivers' standings in both 2022 and 2023, Zhou will look to address and fix his performance issues to retain the only available seat on the grid with his current team.
