Alpha hopes that Zhou Guanyu will attract sponsorship to help the team reach the budget ceiling

Alfa Romeo team leader Frederick Vassell hopes that Zhou Guanyu can make the team an outstanding partner for sponsors.

The Swiss team announced that Zhou Guanyu will race with former Mercedes driver Walteri Bottas for the 2022 season, and their squad has been Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi for the past three seasons.

In the 2021 F2 race, the 22-year-old has stood on the top podium a total of 4 times, has extremely high talent, and at the same time, he has brought a broad market for Alfa Romeo, as he is the first Chinese driver to enter F1.

They have not been higher than P8 in the constructors' standings since Alfa Romeo took over the naming rights of Sauber in 2019, but they see the new rules for 2022 as an opportunity to improve their results. Similarly, they see Zhou Guanyu as a similar opportunity, and Vassell believes that more important than the attraction of the team is that the driver is valuable to the sponsors.

In an interview, Vassell said: "On the commercial side, the driver is ultimately the façade of the team, which is true. We're talking more about Lewis (Hamilton) and Max (Verstappen) than Mercedes and Red Bull, which is normal. We're not Mercedes and Red Bull, we need to think about the next three years, how they're going to improve, how they're going to grow, how they're going to grow, how they're going to attract sponsors, how they're going to fight together. We've said before that we haven't reached the budget cap yet and that our mission is to reach the budget cap in the next 12 or 24 months, which means we also need to think about sponsorship, how to attract sponsors is quite complicated, and the composition of the fleet is an important parameter. ”

Bottas, who has won 10 F1 races, is the team's clear captain and Alfa Romeo hopes he can be a good mentor for Zhou Guanyu.