Ruth Buscombe shares why she thinks Sauber driver Zhou Guanyu is an ‘absolute animal’

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It’s safe to say that the 2024 Formula 1 season has not gone to plan for Sauber driver Zhou Guanyu.

Although the Chinese driver is above teammate Valtteri Bottas in the Drivers’ Championship, they both currently sit on zero points and that looks unlikely to change before the end of the season.

Zhou Guanyu is in his third year in F1 after spending three seasons in Formula 2 before finally getting his chance with Alfa Romeo having spent time in Alpine’s academy.

Zhou’s best moment in F1 came when he scored points on his debut in Bahrain and his 11^th-place finish at Sakhir is the closest he’s come to a top-ten finish during this campaign, aside from the Sprint Race at his home track in Shanghai.

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Ruth Buscombe is an F1 strategist who previously worked for Ferrari, Haas and Sauber and now provides punditry for F1 TV at race weekends.

She was speaking on the Drive to Wynn Podcast and highlighted what Zhou’s greatest strength is.

It’s not been easy for the 25-year-old to showcase his talents in the slowest car on the grid this year.

He and Bottas are frequently struggling to get out of Q1 and while the Finn has managed it on several occasions this year, Zhou has only set a top fifteen lap twice.

However, Buscombe believes that Zhou’s best asset is his ability to catch his rivals off guard at the beginning of races.

It’s a very useful skill to have when starting near the back of the grid but ultimately he’s always had too much work to do to secure that vital first points finish.

Sauber star Zhou Guanyu’s greatest strength is the first five laps of each race

Going through the strengths of certain drivers on the grid, Buscombe said: “Zhou, for example, he’s an absolute animal the first five laps of the race.

“Give him a soft tyre and he’ll be able to make a significant amount of positions right at the very start of the race, really strong with picking off drivers.

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“And it’s like, that’s just one example of like, if, you know, there’s certain times where actually your grid position or, where you are running dominates it.

“But like, if they were starting next to each other naturally, you’d put Valtteri on the reverse and Zhou on the kind of the standard strategy, because that’s the way we maximize the things they’re good at.”

Zhou Guanyu pinpoints why he’s struggled in qualifying this season

The grid has converged to the point where even being slightly off the pace compared to your rivals can have detrimental consequences.

Sauber have Audi funding and support arriving now but years of being run on a comparatively shoestring budget have caught up to them this season.

Zhou has particularly struggled in qualifying which has made progress in races difficult when there are so many cars to overtake.

Bottas has at least offered the team an opportunity to run different strategies by starting slightly closer to the front of the grid.

It looks highly likely that Zhou won’t be on the grid again in 2025 and whether he’s able to make a return after that is yet to be seen.

He’s shown signs of potential but ultimately not enough to sustain a career in Formula 1.