On March 20th, the 2022 F1 Bahrain Grand Prix began, the first F1 driver from China, Zhou Guanyu, represented the Alfa Romeo team in the race at the station, and finally through fierce competition, Zhou Guanyu finished the race with a tenth place result, and won 1 point in his F1 debut!
Following the official announcement in November 2021 to become the first official F1 driver in the history of China's automotive industry, it took only 4 months for Zhou Guanyu to successfully land on the F1 racing track, the debut was perfect, he got the first point of personal F1, and Zhou Guanyu also became the first domestic driver! For Zhou Guanyu, the big boy, many Chinese people do not understand, I am afraid that 90% of the Chinese people still hear the name of Zhou Guanyu for the first time, but through the F1 debut, Zhou Guanyu became famous in one fell swoop!
Zhou Guanyu was born in Shanghai in 1999, just 23 years old this year, the racing driver's talent is very high, at the age of 15 signed a contract with the Ferrari Driver Academy, only one year after studying at the Ferrari Driver Academy, Zhou Guanyu participated in the Italian F4 Championship and got the runner-up result, in 2016 Zhou Guanyu won the third place in European F3, and in 2018 Zhou Guanyu finally got his wish and won the F3 championship!
But Zhou Guanyu's road to the gods is still on record, he set a new record for the fastest F2 at Silverstone in the United Kingdom, and in August 2022 he won the second place in the first leg of the F1 UK, and became the first Chinese racer to finish runner-up in F2, just a month later, Zhou Guanyu won the first F2 championship of his career in the second leg of the FIA F2 Championship, once again refreshing the best result of Chinese racing drivers. In March last year, Zhou Guanyu won the F3 championship, and the good results of one international competition after another also made the Alfa Romeo racing team eye Zhou Guanyu, and finally Zhou Guanyu was signed by the Alfa Romeo team, becoming the first F1 racer in china's history.
I'm afraid that Zhou Guanyu himself did not expect that his F1 debut got a good result of the tenth place and successfully got his first point of F1! However, compared with Zhou Guanyu's name, his family situation is even less known! When Zhou Guanyu was 8 years old, he began to accept the guidance of Ma Qinghua, the first person in Chinese F1, first contacted karting, and then ran all over the country to participate in karting competitions, the champion won softly, and at the age of 13, he went to the United Kingdom to study.
Playing racing since I was a child is not something that the average family can afford! It is understood that Zhou Guanyu's father is a super rich man in China, relying on the operation of luxury car 4s shop to start, Zhou Guanyu was still in childhood his father built a go-kart track for his son! You read that right, Zhou Guanyu's father built a track for him! In 2019, it is for Zhou Guanyu to be able to integrate into the foreign racing circle and buy an F2 racing team for his son, and there are reports that Zhou Guanyu has been trained to become a professional racing driver along the way, and his father's expenditure exceeds 100 million!
Being able to become the first official F1 driver in China and the first Chinese to get F1 points, Zhou Guanyu is also directly related to his father in addition to his talent! It is understood that Zhou Guanyu entered F1 as a "paid driver", Zhou Guanyu's father sponsored at least 30 million euros for the Alfa Romeo Racing Team, equivalent to about 210 million yuan, counting down from professional body to F1 driver, Zhou Guanyu's father spent more than 300 million.
However, his father's support is only one aspect, Zhou Guanyu himself is also very talented is an indisputable fact, even Han Han also said bluntly, Zhou Guanyu's achievements in becoming the first F1 racing driver in China are not lost to Liu Xiang and Yao Ming in the sports world.