Alpine F1 team have still listed Chinese driver Guanyu Zhou as their third driver on the team’s official website. After a series of upper management layoffs, the Alpine F1 team is up and ready to move forward with new leaders. However, the one thing that is not yet certain is the next team principal of the team. Speculations have been around for a long time now that Otmar Szafnauer will join the team but nothing official has come out yet.
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On the other hand, CEO Laurent Rossi has established a firm hold over the team management. Since the end of the 2020 F1 season, every executive of Cyril Abiteboul’s era has left the team, including Budkowski and Prost. Consequently, the team website had no more spaces for any of the executives that left. However, this doesn’t hold true for Alpine’s former reserve driver Zhou.
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN – JUNE 03: F2 Sprint Race 1 winner in Monaco Guanyu Zhou of China and UNI-Virtuosi Racing poses during previews ahead of Round 3:Baku of the Formula 2 Championship at Baku City Circuit on June 03, 2021 in Baku, Azerbaijan . (Photo by Joe Portlock – Formula 1/Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images)
Guanyu Zhou listed as a third driver on the Alpine F1 website
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Alfa Romeo replaced Antonio Giovinazzi with Guanyu Zhou for the 2022 season, which remains to be a controversial call. With Zhou heading over to the Italian team, Alpine announced 2021 F2 champion Oscar Piastri as their new reserve driver.
Zhou’s achievements at the junior level earned him the position of official test driver of the Alpine F1 Team in 2020. Notably, he took the wheel of Fernando Alonso’s A521 during the 1st practice session at the Austrian GP in July 2021.
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However, after his departure to Alfa Romeo, his fellow F2 driver Piastri replaced him in that role. The strange thing, however, remains that Zhou’s profile on the Alpine website still describes him as the third driver, which he is not anymore.
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With a series of new appointments, Alpine would look to improve upon its 2021 numbers. It will be interesting to see how soon they will rectify this profile botch-up though. All said and done, where do you see Alpine ending up in the constructors’ standings in 2022?
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