Alfa Romeo Formula 1 driver was miraculously unhurt and is cleared to drive this weekend in Austria.
Getty ImagesGetty ImagesZhou Guanyu says he was worried about fire while stuck in his overturned Alfa Romeo following his crash on the first lap of last weekend’s Formula 1 British Grand Prix.
The 23-year-old, Formula 1’s first Chinese driver, was having his strongest weekend in the series since debuting and had qualified an impressive ninth at Silverstone. That was before what can only be described as a death-defying crash that ended his race on Sunday.
Guanyu’s car flipped after being hit by George Russell’s Mercedes on the approach to Silverstone’s Turn 1 off the line. The car then flipped and was dragging across the tarmac upside down, continuing its trajectory across the gravel. The Alfa Romeo C42 then struck the fencing and came to a halt, wedged between the fencing and the tire barrier.
Zhou Guanyu was in Austria today, getting ready for Sunday’s F1 Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring.
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The driver was extricated from the car and able to return to his base in London on Sunday night. He was given the all-clear Thursday to return to the car at this week’s F1 Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring. On Thursday, he met the media for the first time since the crash.
Guanyu said that the initial concern was of his hands “because you never know, you can break your hands very easily” in such an accident, before bracing for the accident to come.
“While I was rolling on the ground I knew I would be facing a massive impact coming up because the car wasn’t stopping, so I tried to lock myself in a position that was the safest possible, just waiting for the last impact,” he said. “I was just holding the hands backwards and keeping a reasonable tension so you don’t get flung around when you have that last impact. That was the case, so basically I was just waiting for the last hit.
“Once I was stopped I didn’t know where I was because I was upside down, and the next thing I felt was some leaking. I was not sure if it was from my body or from the car, so I just tried to switch the engine off because the engine was still on at that point. I knew if a fire started it would be difficult to get out, so I switched my engine off and then everything was fine.”
The driver was eventually able to extricate himself with the assistance of marshals and conceded that until he was shown the pictures he had no idea where his C42 had ended up.
As it does with any serious incident, the FIA’s Safety department will launch an investigation into the accident, with focus expected to be placed on why the roll hoop appeared to fail, and why the car was able to vault the tire barrier.
The initial impact flipped the Alfa Romeo.
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“With that first impact, when I landed on the first flip, the team is still doing the first investigation,” Guanyu said. “I think the first hit (on the tarmac) was much harder than what they investigated through the safety test, a few times harder than the numbers than we want. So that’s obviously created a problem.
“I’m more curious that in the future what we can do to improve with the barriers so you don’t have another driver stuck in-between that. If they can make it a lot wider or narrower… having a gap or having it a bit wider, being in my position is probably the worst position to be in a fire.”
Guanyu says he watched the accident back on Sunday to understand what happened and attention swiftly turned to this weekend’s Austrian round.
“Sunday night I was texting all my engineers asking, is my seat okay,” said Zhou, who joked he “picked the wrong road” on his journey home and got stuck in traffic. “I was asking about the engine because that takes a bit of time. For drivers, the seat is very important, it’s been very comfortable so far but it can be different even if they try to do the same.
“I’m quite happy to have a back-to-back race. If you had a summer break just after that (accident) it would be terrible, you would be thinking about the crash repeatedly, even if you try to avoid it you would find it somewhere.”
Course workers extricate the Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu from between a catch fence and tire barrier at Silverstone.
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