'Paddock complained, but everybody has f***ing commercial deals'

Alfa Romeo Racing chose Guanyu Zhou as its second driver alongside team leader Valtteri Bottas. Immediately after the announcement, Frederic Vasseur's team was criticised both inside and outside the paddock. It was said that the Chinese driver was only chosen for financial reasons.

Zhou has a lot of sponsors who bring money with them and on top of that China is a huge market that is interesting for Sauber. However, these are not the factors that have been decisive in contracting Zhou. Vasseur stressed this in an interview with GP Racing.

"Yes, we had negative comments, and I think it was completely unfair," the team boss starts from the magazine. "Joe [Zhou] did pretty well in F2, he got pole positions, he won races. You don’t have to make these kind of bullshit comments after something like this. The paddock complained about the fact that Joe could be a commercial deal for us. But everybody has f***ing commercial deals! We are in a business, and we want to develop the business.

Zhou meets expectations

Vasseur is pleased to see the 23-year-old driver show in his first months as a Formula One driver that he is "there first and foremost because of his performance". At Alfa Romeo, they are happy with what they have seen from Zhou so far. The objective for the first Grands Prix was to reach Q2 and get points. He has more than succeeded in that task.