In the round-up: Ahead of his first appearance in his home race, Zhou Guanyu admits he cried when he secured his promotion to Formula 1 three years ago.
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In brief
Zhou cried when he got F1 seat
Zhou was an Alpine junior driver in 2021 when he was picked by Alfa Romeo (which Sauber competed as at the time) to make his debut with them.
“I started crying like I think I never cried before that,” he told the official F1 website. “For five years for me it was just something that I dreamed of.”
Zhou led the F2 points standings after the first three rounds but was beaten to the title by fellow Alpine junior Oscar Piastri. “I felt like even when I was in F2 at the time, halfway through the season, I was leading the championship, I still felt like the percentage [chance] I’d get to Formula 1 was less than 5%, because that year was a tough year.
“There was only one seat at the time, Alfa Romeo, was available and there I think almost 10 drivers fighting and the list was going down and down. Of course I still was in the list but I didn’t really believe that I would had this opportunity, at least for that year to be going straight from F2 into F1.”
Williams bring update for Albon despite damage
Despite the damage done by their drivers’ three crashes in the last two race weekends, Williams will introduced an aerodynamic update to their Halo fairing on Alexander Albon’s car only this weekend. Both drivers will also have replacements of the new front wing specification the team introduced at the last race.Bumps eased at Shanghai
The Chinese Grand Prix promoter has worked on easing some of the bumps which have developed at the track since it was completed for the country’s first F1 race 20 years ago. Trouble spots a turns one, three and eight have been addressed.
Other changes include the addition of gravel in place of what was asphalt on the outer edges of the run-off areas at turns 12 and 16. Sausage kerbs and artificial grass have been removed completely and new debris fencing installed.
Special livery for Lundqvist
Foyt “very happy” with team’s Indy 500 preparation
AJ Foyt declared himself satisfied with his team’s preparations for the Indianapolis 500 after the 89-year-old made one of his increasingly rare visits to see them in action at the speedway.
“I’ve been very happy with testing,” said Foyt. “Testing tells you a lot but sometimes it doesn’t, but normally it does. I thought the Open Test went very well. We were up in the top five or six and they had the full field there so that kind of tells you where you stand a little bit.
“I know we had something left and I’m quite sure a lot of them had something left. We’ll just have to wait till they drop the green here.”
He said son Larry Foyt is “doing a very successful job this year” in charge of the team. “He’s learning every day and [you’ve] got to crawl [before] your walk. And that’s where I look at it.
“It’s so much different now because you can’t even really start your own race cars anymore without the engineers of Honda or Chevrolet. And I don’t care for that. But that’s the rules. You’ve got to go by them.”
Boya tops F3 test
Mari Boya narrowly headed the second day of Formula 3 testing at the Circuit de Catalunya. His lap of 1’26.646 put him less than five hundredths of a second ahead of Leonardo Fornaroli and Luke Browning.
The track was busier than it had been on day one and many drivers took the opportunity to conduct long runs at the track which will hold the series’ fifth round at in two months’ time.
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
F1 Manager developer accused of 'dehumanising' layoffs and mismanagement (Sports Illustrated)
'According to the same source and verified via two others, the F1 Manager series has been a disaster for the company with sales being 'very underwhelming compared to management's expectations.''
The 100 most influential people of 2024 (Time)
'No athlete has enjoyed more victory laps, in more disparate places around the world, than Verstappen, the Formula 1 driver who has won three straight F1 championships.'
Pulling does the double to end Zandvoort in-season testing quickest (F1 Academy)
'Continuing her form into the afternoon, the Alpine driver claimed the fastest lap of the two-day test in the drier second session. Clocking in a 1'36.045, Pulling headed the pack by three tenths to Ferrari's Maya Weug and Mercedes’ Doriane Pin.'
'Getting data into a 'data lake' – a single, massive, un-siloed data storage centre – is where the AI journey starts. Once it's there, we can apply the right analysis tools on top, and that's where the machine-learning kicks in.'
'I'll try not to be too stupid' - Misano EPrix team radio (Formula E via YouTube)
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Social media
Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
|@Charles_Leclerc's @scuderiaferrari was chosen at random for extra checks after the #JapaneseGP. It passed.
Among the parts inspected were the plank assembly and its thickness (he was disqualified from the 2023 #USGP after failing that check), the rear wing and floor.#F1 pic.twitter.com/Ts2D4jGv7O
— RaceFans (@racefansdotnet) April 17, 2024
20 years later, home race I’m back. 🇨🇳#ChineseGP #TeamZHOU pic.twitter.com/qH0XeeXFqW
— 周冠宇 | Zhou Guanyu 🇨🇳 (@ZhouGuanyu24) April 17, 2024
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- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
Would time penalties in qualifying be a more fitting penalty than grid drops? Or should time penalties in races be replaced by position drops?
I thought it was a shame the qualifying time penalties were never repeated after Hungary 2006. I prefer them to grid drops, since they give the driver a sporting chance to overcome the penalty, rather than simply pushing the driver back a set number of positions.
@Red-Andy
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Alan and Consi!
Lewisham Milton
18th April 2024, 0:13
What if you apply the wrong analysis tools, like you messed up the simulation data half way through last season? Then it’ll be a data sewer.
MichaelN
18th April 2024, 0:24
That’s a great photo of Zhou in the stands. One can only imagine how excited he is to be racing there. Hopefully it goes well, but it’ll be a struggle given the sorry state Sauber has put itself in. It is, by FOM standards, not worthy of being in the series.
Zhou might nevertheless get another year, unless Audi wants to give someone a head start on their project. He is a safe driver, but more detrimental to his career chances, he hasn’t made any inroads relative to Bottas in the past year. He seems to have hit a plateau of sorts. Unfortunately for him, the current Sauber team isn’t the place to learn much.
Jere (@jerejj)
18th April 2024, 7:33
His chances of staying in Team Hin will largely depend on how much Audi desires the Chinese market, but still possible, although an entire lineup change could equally happen.
Certainly, both current full-time drivers would want to be part of that project, but whether Audi wants either of them is another matter.
Nick T.
18th April 2024, 13:36
China is the VW group’s most important market. Audi and VW are both huge there and they’ve got tens-of-billions invested in manufacturing facilities there. However, I don’t think the Chinese are that fussed about Zhou that losing him would make that much difference, especially if they did it while the team still lacked the Audi name or badging.
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
18th April 2024, 0:51
It seems that the most recent draft of the 2026 regulations does not include DRS as an overtaking aid.
The cars will have the active aero where drag will automatically be reduced at set parts of the circuits but they will no longer have the extra DRS mode that would have worked as DRS has since 2011 and been there to aid overtaking.
It seems that when simulator testing was been done the extra drag reduction from the DRS mode on top of the drag lost via the active aero made cars too unstable with even the slightest steering inputs causing them to spin out & they couldn’t find a solution that didn’t result in DRS becoming completely ineffective so they have instead opted to just remove DRS entirely.
That could change as the 2026 regulations don’t have to be finalized until the end of July I believe. But as of right now DRS in it’s current form is going away after 2025.
Jere (@jerejj)
18th April 2024, 6:41
Interesting, although having designated zones for active aero seems weird, given it isn’t exactly like DRS.
Anyhow, eliminating or minimizing risks involved with drag reduction is ultimately a wise precautionary move.
S
18th April 2024, 6:54
It is exactly like DRS – it just isn’t restricted to only the rear wing.
It will affect the whole car, and for more of every lap.
If DRS is unpopular, wait until the teams have worked this out properly….
Reduced drag via active aero means even less drafting down the straights, but they’ll still have all the negative aspects (and more) from maximum aero in the corners.
This is a disaster for racing.
BasCB (@bascb)
18th April 2024, 7:27
I think the reason for going with sections of track where they use active aero would have to do with limiting the risks of unexpected loss of aero load, or teams skirting too close to the limit with their settings if they don’t?
Jere (@jerejj)
18th April 2024, 7:30
Indeed, which is pretty much the approach with designated DRS activation zones.
Nick T.
18th April 2024, 13:38
I’d like to see active aero give cars more downforce when running in dirty air enabling them to stay close as well as not burn out their tires instead of a boring straight line pass. This seems like it would be an obvious alternative to DRS.
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
18th April 2024, 1:30
Regarding Zhou, I am often fscinated to look at driver’s pre F1 racing records. Zhou is not alone in not reaally having a particularly stand-out history. Of course he was quite young (as most are) when joining F1, and often there are championships where a driver has not completed a full season, but a 1, 2, and 3 in various formulae over the preceding 7 years, with the other results being notably poorer is – in my opinion – rather unspectacular.
Despite his detractors, Someone like Mick Schumachr has a much better record.
D
18th April 2024, 6:30
RE: COTD
For me, that 2006 Hungary qualifying session was very exciting because time penalties were immediately applied to Schumacher’s and Alonso’s times.
Those two were flying that day…
However, I am unsure whether time penalties should replace grid drops.
I would rather have a rule tweak, so that grid penalties are applied immediately, like time penalties were in Hungary.
For example, driver has a 5 grid drop.
In Q1 he sets a lap time good for 11th, but when penalty is applied, he drops to 16th and is out.
Jere (@jerejj)
18th April 2024, 6:37
Good idea, which should also work practically.
RBAlonso (@rbalonso)
18th April 2024, 7:29
In reality I don’t think that would work. Firstly, would the penalty be applied in each segment of quali? If not anyone with 5 places simply needs to beat 11th in Q1 – something easily achievable for the top 5 teams. If you apply it after each segment it would be confusing if multiple drivers had penalties all at the same time. Of course a good number of penalties are issues post qualifying too so we can’t retrospectively put 12th in Q1 into 17th when they went on to start on pole.
The reason the arbitrary x places was introduced was because it was agnostic to car performance, track layout and weather conditions. I.e. one second affects Verstappen’s spa pole of 8 tenths differently to a midfield runner at Monaco.
D
18th April 2024, 10:30
Yes, penalty would be applied in each Q segment.
If a driver carrying 5 grid drop penalty sets 10th fastest time in Q1, he is classified 15th in Q1 and advances to Q2. He still carries his penalty to next qualy segment, all the way to Q3 if he reaches it.
Of course that any penalties issued after qulifying would apply only to the final qulifying classification and not retrospectively to each Q segments.
And for multiple driver having grid drop penalties. Just use the current system of applying penalties, but do it immediately for each Q segment.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
18th April 2024, 12:49
The problem with a time penalty in qualifying is the same as time penalties in the race – it can be a small penalty or even no penalty at all, or it can move you straight to the back of the grid depending on how close you are with other cars. If Max gets a 1 second penalty, he might just drop from say pole to third or fifth. If someone in the midfield pack gets a 1 second penalty, they could drop from say a likely P6, down to P20, depending on when the penalty is applied (if applied in Q1 and preventing the driver from progressing).
Grid drops seem more consistent to me. A 3 place grid drop is a 3 place grid drop regardless of the circumstances.
Jere (@jerejj)
18th April 2024, 6:36
After having rewatched the last three pole laps & Gasly’s 2019 fastest lap onboard over the recent days, the Shanghai International Circuit didn’t have any sausage curbs in the first place, so I guess the slightly misleading reference in the event notes is about the small yellow bumps at T2, 9, 10, 11, 12, & the final corner apex points.
Artificial grass, on the other hand, was at 3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, & final corner exits, albeit also largely surrounding 12, 13, & 14.
The image with Zhou waving a Renault flag, which I’d previously seen, is apparently from 2005, while the image here, which I hadn’t seen until today, is from the inaugural race.
I also already noticed in the former image when I saw it for the first time that he was wearing glasses in the mid-2000s, which, considering his age, means he either had the laser treatment at a relatively young age, i.e., early 20s/before 20 or only wore them temporarily even as a young kid, a bit similarly to Seb, who I’ve seen wearing glasses in one elementary school image & another from when he was about 15 or 16.
I’ve always been okay with grid penalties for qualifying infringements.
Yes, time penalties allow for overcoming the penalty, just like in the races (or sprints, for that matter).
However, being able to overcome has often been questionable by allowing drivers to game the system, so perhaps best not to reintroduce them in qualifying sessions.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
18th April 2024, 7:46
I wonder if zhou will also cry when he has to leave f1, he’s not first on list, but mustn’t be much further.
Jay
18th April 2024, 8:54
Harsh but true.
SteveP
18th April 2024, 10:36
Is that the update to the first chassis he broke, or an update to the second he broke after borrowing from his teammate?
SteveP
18th April 2024, 10:38
Probably just cocktail-sausage vs. Full breakfast ??
Jere (@jerejj)
18th April 2024, 12:05
Maybe
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
18th April 2024, 23:27
Can we please stop with the videogame chatter here KC?