Zhou Guanyu will revert to an older specification Sauber C44 car in this weekend’s Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix, having struggled since changes were made at Imola.
The Chinese driver has endured a tumultuous 2024 campaign thus far as he’s been eliminated in Q1 and failed to score a single point across the opening nine rounds.
Zhou’s tribulations reached a tipping point last time out at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve when he had several crashes in practice and also qualified as the slowest driver.
Having experienced problems with riding bumps in recent rounds, Zhou hopes that a switch back to an earlier specification machine will inspire an upturn in his form.
“I find the car is very stiff over the bumps,” Zhou said.
“So, I wasn’t able to push. For example, the mistake I did in FP3 in Montreal, that was just really bad. Suddenly you hit the bumps, the car is just spinning around.
“This is something that was let’s say strange or a little bit shocking. But we made a lot of changes now before this weekend in terms of just changing everything again to a different spec, to making sure I get the feeling like I had at least at the beginning of the year back.
“Because I feel completely different now to what I was able to do compared to before.
“So, I’m looking forward to this weekend because it’s a brand-new style, it’s a bit more like starting from scratch.
“I changed my chassis and changed quite a bit of parts [at Imola], and so we are changing everything back to what I had.”
Zhou explained that Sauber will also replace “every part, making sure we start from scratch”, citing that Sauber “don’t know exactly if the problem is just the chassis”.
When asked whether Sauber had noticed a similar issue on Valtteri Bottas’ car, Zhou divulged that “the bumps I felt, and the way how the car responds, is a bit more extreme than what’s happening to his side of the garage”.
“So, that’s why we made a decision to change,” he added. “I think it’s the right call, and I’m really happy to get it done.
“Because it’s not easy for the team just to commit to that. But I think once we commit to that, hopefully it’s the right call. And it only can be made better.”
