Guanyu Zhou will drive Fernando Alonso’s Alpine during FP1 at the Austrian Grand Prix, but will Zhou’s grand prix weekend debut lead to him becoming China’s first ever Formula 1 driver next year?
Ever since Zhou graduated from karting as a Ferrari junior, he’s been followed by that same question. It’s helped to propel his career forwards but it’s also given him more pressure on his shoulders than many of his Formula 2 rivals.
China is a market that F1 and the majority of the manufacturers want to crack. And only Bahrain – with a population that’s less than 1% of China’s – has held an F1 race as many times as China without producing an F1 driver.
F1 first visited the Chinese GP in 2004 and yet Ma Qing Hua, who made several FP1 appearances for HRT (pictured below) and Caterham during 2012-13, remains the only Chinese driver to participate in a grand prix weekend – prior to Zhou’s debut this Friday.
Zhou is not just China’s best hope of getting a driver on the F1 grid, he’s also the country’s only hope of this generation – something Alpine itself acknowledged. No other Chinese driver outside of karting has displayed anywhere near the F1-level of potential that Zhou has teased.
But is Zhou good enough, nationality and all the commercial benefits that come with that aside?
Following domestic karting success, Zhou made the brave move from China to rain-strewn, hilly Sheffield in Yorkshire in 2012. He dovetailed his education with international karting and then earned a place in Ferrari’s young driver programme in the middle of 2014 alongside the likes of Jules Bianchi and Lance Stroll.
Ferrari took him to Italy to race in Italian F4 with single-seater behemoth Prema, and he finished as the championship’s runner-up before switching to race in European F3 for three years.
Zhou’s third and final year in Euro F3 began strongly with victory as he claimed his maiden win in the opening race but he’d have to wait until the very last weekend to return to the top step of the podium in a season marred by incidents and collisions.
Two victories and an eventual slide to eighth in the points standings was a disappointing result considering he matched team-mate and champion Mick Schumacher’s qualifying average during the season.
It’s a trend seen throughout Zhou’s single-seater career, whereby he isn’t always able to get the maximum in the crucial moments of qualifying and the races, and he often appears to lack that ruthless streak possessed by many of his former rivals who have since made it to F1.
In 2019, he switched to Formula 2 and beat the likes of Schumacher and Callum Ilott to finish as the top rookie as a switch to Renault’s junior programme appeared to give him a much-needed fresh start.
Ilott then joined him at the Virtuosi team and the opening round of the 2020 F2 season suggested Zhou would be the driver to beat as only a mechanical issue prevented him from defeating Ilott and Schumacher to score his maiden F2 win.
But thereafter it was Ilott who led the team’s charge, and he became engaged in a title fight with Schumacher. Zhou did pick up his maiden F2 win in the reverse-grid race at Sochi but only after a red flag for a monster crash between Jack Aitken and Luca Ghiotto meant only five laps of the race were run.
Zhou ended up finishing sixth in the championship, behind the likes of Schumacher, Yuki Tsunoda and Nikita Mazepin, who all graduated to F1.
The 22-year-old chose to stick around in F2 for a third crack at the title and he’s started this year by taking the championship lead after the opening three rounds with two victories, alongside his role as Alpine’s test driver.
However, on the evidence of the season so far, Zhou looks likely to be overcome by his fellow Alpine F1 junior Oscar Piastri, who clinched the FIA Formula 3 title last year and has compared favourably to his highly-rated team-mate Robert Shwartzman at Prema this season.
Ferrari junior – and Zhou’s former F3 team-mate – Shwartzman does appear to be finally picking up the momentum that was expected of him as the pre-season title favourite, while Red Bull protege Juri Vips won two of the three races at the previous round in Baku.
As well as Piastri, Theo Pourchaire and Liam Lawson have starred in their rookie F2 seasons, meaning there’s no shortage of drivers with F1 potential in the second-tier.
And you’d have to say Zhou doesn’t make the top five of that list, especially when you factor in his experience level and how current F1 drivers have somewhat easily cast him aside while team-mates.
Therefore, it’s difficult to make a purely-performance level argument for Zhou graduating to F1. While you could make the argument that Zhou has higher potential than current F1 drivers Mazepin (who finished ahead of Zhou in F2 last year) and Nicholas Latifi, you can also say the same of many in the F2 – and indeed FIA F3 – field.
Zhou has been given test days in Alpine’s old F1 cars and drove Renault’s 2020 F1 car alongside Alonso at the ‘young driver test’ in Abu Dhabi at the end of last season.
But Zhou isn’t even in the top prospect in Alpine’s own academy with Piastri currently taking that mantle and Victor Martins – who was dropped and re-hired by Alpine’s academy earlier this year – having a strong maiden FIA F3 season.
Perhaps Zhou’s place with Alpine’s pecking order isn’t too important considering Esteban Ocon has signed a new three-year deal that will keep him there until the end of 2024, and Alonso is just starting to find his form on his F1 return.
It leaves Zhou looking outside of Alpine, which doesn’t have affiliations with other teams and hasn’t actually handed a driver from its academy an F1 debut since the scheme was relaunched in 2016.
Williams would be the obvious choice, with the future of both George Russell and Latifi in doubt. In particular, if Latifi was to depart, Williams may look to replace the Canadian’s substantial backing with the money that Zhou can bring.
Alfa Romeo is perhaps Zhou’s only other option. It would be safe to assume that if the Ferrari-controlled seat was vacated by Antonio Giovinazzi, that Ferrari protege Shwartzman, Alfa’s young driver Pourchaire or test driver Ilott would be next in line.
But with the Alfa deal in doubt, the Sauber outfit could turn to Zhou’s backing to fill that financial hole. However, it remains a distant possibility.
Williams and Alfa seem Zhou’s only options for F1 graduation but with an F2 field stacked with talent, it’s hard to argue that Zhou is more deserving of an F1 seat than many of his F2 rivals – or indeed his 2020 team-mate Ilott. There’s also a plethora of potential debutants and returnees that will be knocking on the door of Williams, leaving Zhou as a mere outside contender.
But commercial considerations will be ever-present in F1, and Zhou has proven to be a handy, professional driver with a reasonable shot at winning this year’s F2 title, meaning he’ll remain China’s best hope of an F1 driver for quite some time even if he hasn’t displayed enough to earn it on merit alone.
