Alfa Romeo Investigates Fault That Led to Zhou’s Poor Start and Crash

Alfa Romeo say they are puzzled by why Zhou Guanyu’s car entered a failsafe mode, which resulted in a very slow start in the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Zhou earned a career-best grid position of fifth in Saturday’s qualifying but ended the race in 16th after a dramatic opening-lap incident. When the lights went out, Zhou applied throttle but appeared to lose engine response, leaving him slow off the line and immediately engulfed by the cars behind, including team mate Valtteri Bottas, who had to take evasive action.

“I have a problem, guys, on the clutch,” Zhou radioed during the run to turn one. “Fucking RPM.”

As he braked for the first corner, Zhou nudged the rear of Daniel Ricciardo’s AlphaTauri, which pushed Ricciardo into Esteban Ocon’s Alpine. Ocon then collided with team mate Pierre Gasly, eliminating both Alpine drivers. Zhou and Ricciardo were able to continue without stopping for repairs.

The stewards reviewed the incident and handed Zhou a five-second time penalty for causing a collision; he served this during his first pit stop. Zhou also received two superlicence points.

“I was holding the revs before the five lights and I just lost all the response from the throttle,” Zhou told media including RaceFans after the race. “So I started basically with zero throttle. I was flat on the pedal.”

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Xevi Pujolar, Alfa Romeo’s head of trackside engineering, said the team were investigating what caused Zhou’s poor start.

“We’re still investigating what went wrong,” Pujolar said. “It looks like something to do with the brake system strategy triggered a failsafe on the engine side, and now we’re trying to understand how that was activated at that moment.”

He added that the issue also affected Bottas, who lost several positions as a result. “It also had an effect on Valtteri, who was just behind. Valtteri lost three positions there and then lost the rhythm and another three positions during lap one.”

Zhou said turbulent air between cars on the approach to the first corner contributed to the chain of events that followed.

“I was trying to brake as late as I could to gain positions back,” he explained. “But I got into the dirty air of the cars ahead and unfortunately locked up into them. It’s not what I wanted.”

The stewards concluded Zhou failed to anticipate how quickly the cars ahead would slow, and decided not to apply the greater leeway sometimes afforded for first-lap incidents.

“Although this was a lap one incident, where some leeway is given to drivers caught up in the middle of a number of cars, this particular incident was not one of those,” the stewards said. “Here, car 24 [Zhou] got off to a slow start and simply did not slow down enough when approaching the corner, resulting in an unnecessary collision.”

Despite their strong Saturday showing, neither Alfa Romeo driver scored points. Zhou described the race as a missed opportunity for the team.

“We lost a chance today,” he said. “We need to continue to show we have a strong car, especially on Saturday, and then convert more opportunities on Sunday’s race. Not the best day for the team.”

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