£30k-a-week driver has suffered ‘so much misfortune’ this season amid doubts over his F1 future

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Being a Formula 1 driver requires an unimaginable amount of skill, bravery and years of hard work to navigate the ultra-competitive junior series to reach the pinnacle of motorsport.

Nearly every driver on the grid has multiple championships to their name before they’re first given an opportunity to drive a Formula 1 car.

However, once a driver is on the grid, they need to be ruthless but also need a lot of luck to ensure their career is a success.

The Belgian Grand Prix was the perfect example of this as George Russell thought he drove the perfect race before discovered his car was underweight.

While that wasn’t necessarily luck-based as Mercedes made the mistake, Russell will feel that luck wasn’t on his side given his disqualification was completely out of his hands.

Speaking on The Race Members’ Club Podcast, journalist Edd Straw was speaking about a driver who has had more than their fair share of bad luck this season.

There’s one team that stood out this season but not for the right reasons and that’s Sauber.

The team that will become Audi in 2026 have yet to score a point and the gap between the Swiss outfit and the other nine manufacturers appears to be growing.

Both Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu are becoming accustomed to racing well outside the top ten this year.

While Bottas will be frustrated with how his campaign is going, Zhou has arguably been the unluckiest driver on the grid.

In Spa, Zhou was the only driver to retire as he barely completed five laps before his car gave up.

While the £30k-a-week driver has regularly finished behind Bottas, he’s not been helped by his car or the circumstances around each race where he’s often been used to test parts or try set-up changes that benefit the rest of the team.

READ MORE: Sauber driver Zhou Guanyu’s life outside F1 from height to net worth

Sauber driver Zhou Guanyu has suffered with so much bad luck this season

While Zhou has only retired from two races this season – the Japanese Grand Prix and Spa – he’s regularly been a long way off the pace of the rest of the grid.

Even when he has finished races, he’s almost always been one of the final classified drivers and Zhou also had to deal with some terrible pit stops at the beginning of the campaign that regularly ruined his and Bottas’s weekends.

Talking about the Chinese driver’s fortunes, Straw said: “I think also sometimes it depends on circumstances, Zhou Guanyu for example, he’s had so much misfortune this year.

“He managed to have two separate problems, the engine problem he had and then he actually retired with a braking problem within about four laps at Spa.

“So, he has had a lot of difficulties this year, he hasn’t excelled in the car when it has been working but it’s been very, very difficult for anybody in a Sauber.”

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Will Zhou Guanyu still be in Formula 1 in 2025?

The driver’s market has not been kind to Sauber or its two current drivers.

Audi have taken full control of Sauber behind the scenes and moved quickly to hire Nico Hulkenberg from Haas for 2025.

This means that Bottas and Zhou are fighting for the final seat and that’s without considering external factors.

Bottas is likely to be the driver Sauber continue with for 2025 if they don’t bring in a driver from outside of the team.

That means Zhou’s only hope is a return to Alpine where he was once a junior driver.

Zhou has admitted that he’s glad Bottas hasn’t destroyed him this season, but the reality is he’s not had the car to show his true potential.

However, after three seasons, it appears as though Zhou’s time in Formula 1 is set to come to an end.