The Alfa Romeo driver regretted the choice of hard compounds at the start of the race in Spielberg - which, in the opinion of the Chinese driver himself, compromised his performance due to the high level of wear
After recovering from his impressive crash at Silverstone in time for the Austrian Grand Prix last weekend, Guanyu Zhou did not have the best of performances in Spielberg. And, according to the Chinese driver himself, this was because of a wrong choice right at the start of the 11th round of 2022 Formula 1.
"It wasn't the best weekend, but in the race I think the problem was the choice for hard tires - we couldn't find any rhythm on them. For me, it was just wear and tear and no reward," said the Alfa Romeo driver.
Zhou started from 13th position in Austria and was as good as seventh during the first half of the race, but encountered a high rate of degradation on his white compounds and was left behind on the grid.
"If I could go back, I would have opted for the medium tires - because we were on them for 20 or 30 laps, and I felt we had found the good pace we found in the sprint. It shows that maybe our setup wasn't the best fit with the hard tires, so our race was hurt," he analyzed.
"We tried a riskier strategy, choosing the white stripe tires from the start. But we ran out of grip at the start and I found it difficult to find the car's top speed in the DRS gear compared to AlphaTauri. They easily overtook us at the end of the braking. It's a bit frustrating, but that's how it is. Looking at the positives, I think we were able to find a little bit of pace throughout the race," revealed the Chinese driver, who crossed the finish line in Spielberg in 14th place.
Punished 5s by the FIA (International Automobile Federation) race direction for exceeding track limits - the Austrian GP had no less than 43 records of such infractions - Zhou admitted to having run off the track at Spielberg at times, but questioned the penalty.
"To be honest, I knew that I went off the track a few times while still on the track. But I was surprised by some of the penalties, because I was behind Yuki (Tsunoda) and he was also being punished. I feel that very often when I exceeded the track limits, I was actually slower. In those scenarios I always had to slow down, and that's not ideal. With the new, bigger tires, the visibility is much worse than before, so it makes this issue more difficult - but it's the same for everybody," concluded the Alfa Romeo member.