Zhou reveals main reason for Sauber's struggles in 2024
After his exit from the Sauber F1 outfit, Formula One's first Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu reflected on the season, singling out the pit stop issues as the main reason for the Hinwil-based outfit's main challenge in the opening part of the season.
The Hinwil-based Sauber F1 team that will be Audi's works outfit from 2026 announced earlier that Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu will leave the Swiss team at the end of the season.
After leaving Mercedes at the end of the 2021 season, Valtteri Bottas joined Sauber to partner Formula One's first Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu. The Finnish and Chinese driver have been team-mates for the last three years, but they have endured a difficult campaign in 2024 with the squad still pointless after 23 race weekends.
Sauber that is set to become Audi's works outfit in 2026 has already announced the appointment of Nico Hulkenberg, but Bottas and Zhou had been in contention for the second seat. However, the Hinwil-based organisation elected to sing McLaren junior racer Gabriel Bortoleto to complete its driver line-up.
Asked whether he had any idea that he was going to have the kind of season that he had after the season-opener in Manama, Zhou reckoned that the pit stop issues coinceded with the time when his car was fairly competitive, which meant that Sauber missed a crucial period of time of the year when it would have been able to score points.
"I mean, I was thinking that was a very good start point, but I didn't expect that's actually the best result we had. Yeah, we were facing a lot of unexpected challenges for the season.
"I think it's very difficult for every single, I think, member in the team because, like I always mentioned, the first part of the season, the first five, six races, I think me and Valtteri, we had several occasions that we can be quite good at points, and then we had this pit stop issue, which got massively delayed until we fixed that into the European races, unfortunately.
"And since then we didn't really have the performance in the car to be fighting back in the points like we did in the previous few weekends. So it's been very tough, I guess. As a driver, you cannot pay the end result because of that season that everything can be very possible for the future.
"So, yeah, right now, like I always said, it's a relief, but I still want to finish this journey together with the team in the best way as possible. I think it's been a very family feeling together with Sauber over the last two and a half years and to this point. And then, yeah, let's see what the future is. But right now, I'm just trying to enjoy as much as I could with the next coming races," concluded Zhou.
