Guanyu Zhou "heartbroken" by Alfa Romeo problems

Alfa Romeo

Guanyu Zhou "heartbroken" by Alfa Romeo problems

Zhou has failed to score a point since the first race of 2022

Sam Hall

Thursday 16 June 2022 16:05 Updated: 16:25

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Guanyu Zhou has revealed the was left 'heartbroken' by his latest retirement after being in a strong position to end his F1 points drought.

Zhou was running inside the top 10 at last Sunday's Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku when a Sauber-related cooling issue forced Alfa Romeo to retire his car from the race - the Chinese driver's third retirement in the last four outings.

On both previous occasions, it was again reliability which let the 23-year-old down, with a water leak to blame in Miami and a power loss in Spain.

Speaking after his latest retirement, Zhou said: "From my side, I didn't put one foot wrong.

"The whole race was under control and it was also looking good for getting to the finish on those tyres so when I heard that [call to retire], it was pretty heartbreaking to stop the car once again for the third time in four races.

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"It is difficult to accept that but we have to keep working as a team. That is the priority, we have to fix for the future, getting to the finish I think has been missing way too much this season already."

Zhou left hurting by dropped points

Zhou made an immediate impact by scoring a point in his debut race, but he has since been unable to add to his tally - primarily due to the poor reliability of his Alfa Romeo.

With a quickfire burst of five races in seven weeks leading into the summer shutdown, Zhou has urged Alfa Romeo to get on top of its problems.

"I think that is the biggest issue to get fixed," Zhou continued as he now looks forward to this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.

"Obviously, next race coming up is very short so we need to fully focus here or in the factory to get it solved because it seems like - I don't know what the issue was but it is still there.

"It is getting too many points out of my hands and it is hurting too much because in Miami we had a chance of points, a big chance.

"Barcelona, we had a chance and here we were in the points with people not pitting, looking at P8 or something. But nevertheless, we didn't get to the finish."

Additional reporting by Ewan Gale