Alfa Romeo driver Guanyu Zhou managed to qualify 13th in Jeddah but fell to the back of the grid on the first lap after his car’s anti-stall system activated following contact with Daniel Ricciardo at turn 1.
This left Zhou five seconds behind the rest, in 20th position, and although he struggled to come back, a drive-throug, for failing to properly serve a five-second penalty in the pits due to the front jack mechanic touching his car , meant that the Chinese driver was unable to score points.
Zhou ran into a similar problem with the anti-stall system on the first lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix, causing him to lose many positions before he managed to climb back to 10th, which gave him his first F1 point.
Zhou told Motorsport.com, after finishing 11th at the Saudi Grand Prix, that Alfa Romeo ‘s main objective was to resolve this issue in time for the next race in Australia.
“Daniel [Ricciardo] came out a little bit better, and we all got together a lot at Turn 1, and I had to go off track to avoid contact,” Zhou explained.
“We still touched, however, the anti-stall system kicked in again. So honestly, I don’t have any answers or explanations on that.”
“As I said, it is definitely the first priority on the list of problems that we have to fix for the next race, because in terms of pace, the race was fast again. We had the opportunity to fight for the points, but with that problem again, followed by the drive-through penalty, that killed our chances.”
Zhou wasn’t sure if there were two separate problems with his Alfa Romeo’s clutch and anti-stall, but he was sure the anti-stall mishaps didn’t help.
“It’s clutch-related and that definitely affects everything that has to do with clutch release timing,” Zhou said.
“We’ll see what happens in Australia, but that’s the problem we have to solve.”
Despite the problems at the start and the drive-through he had to do, Zhou managed to finish 11th, as Alfa Romeo was once again competitive among the cars in the middle zone. But the Chinese driver lamented the missed opportunity to score more points, largely due to the drive-through penalty.
“Even with the start problem, without the drive-through, we would still be in the top 10,” Zhou said.
“Obviously there are a lot of positives to take from the weekend. For me, the fact that I managed to catch up. In Bahrain we had some problems and here they were solved. So that was good.”
“But our biggest problem was still there, so that’s what we’ll be focusing on the most after this race,” he concluded.
