Why Guanyu Zhou's extension with Alfa Romeo Sauber F1(Audi) is disappointing, uninteresting, and somewhat alarming

Guanyu Zhou will be the F1 driver for Sauber in 2024 as the team confirmed a one-year extension. While the reactions to this choice have been mixed with a faction of the fanbase in favor of the decision while others are questioning it, there is a bigger issue at play here that needs to be addressed.

It is around the somewhat uninspirational, uninteresting, and maybe even borderline mediocre nature of the call that has raised bigger questions about what Audi is looking to do with its soon-to-be F1 team.

With Andreas Seidl presiding over these important decisions at Sauber as the team CEO, the fact that he went with Guanyu Zhou is intriguing if not underwhelming.

The Theo Pourchaire snub does not make sense

The first question that comes to mind with this announcement is what the team is going to do with Theo Pourchaire. For the uninitiated, Theo is a Sauber Racing Academy driver currently competing in F2. His junior racing history? He lost the F3 title to now F1 driver Oscar Piastri by just 3 points and is on the verge of winning the F2 title with just one round to go.

In all likelihood, Theo is looking at a year on the sidelines as a reserve driver as he gets passed over for Guanyu Zhou, a driver whose best result was a distant P3 in F2 in his third season. Theo is an impressive talent, maybe not as impressive as Piastri but someone worth keeping an eye on. Is Guanyu Zhou a better prospect than Theo? After more than 30 races in which Zhou has not put together many eye-catching performances, the evidence is stacked against the Chinese driver. For an outfit that would soon be taken over by Audi, going ahead with Zhou seems like an uninspired choice.

Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou to usher in the Audi era?

The 2024 F1 season is the beginning of the Sauber-Audi partnership as the German automotive will own a 25% stake in the team. This stake will grow to 75% in 2026 when Audi makes its official entry into the sport. The influence of the German manufacturer will begin from the 2024 F1 season and the drivers to usher in that era will be Guanyu Zhou and Valtteri Bottas.

In Zhou, the team will have a driver who at best could be a strong midfield contender while Bottas is someone whose performances have been questionable this season. For a player as big as Audi, the lineup just seems disappointing at best. These are not the signs of a unit that is aggressively looking to take over the sport and hit the ground running.

How seriously should Audi's F1 bid be taken?

In the last year since Audi announced that it will have an F1 team in 2026, there have been far and few developments that have made it out of the camp. In all fairness, none of them have been interesting enough for anyone to look around and take notice.

Andreas Seidl has not gone on a hiring spree, far from it. There hasn't been any news of a major investment coming in to bring the facilities up to speed at Hinwil. Finally, the only news about the Audi power unit for the 2026 F1 season has been a bit underwhelming with Red Bull chief Helmut Marko claiming that the German unit might be struggling on that front.

Even on the driver lineup side of things, Audi has been rumored to approach Carlos Sainz for a seat. The Ferrari driver is certainly a solid contributor but is he considered as one of the elites of the grid? Probably not. And now to top it all off, Audi will enter the sport (unofficially) with Zhou and Bottas as their driver line-up.

These are not the signs of a team that is looking to hit the ground running from the get-go and in F1, if you don't show the urgency to compete and win, you're not going to win any time soon. The hype around Audi was impressive at first but the latest developments around the team have certainly made everyone take a step back and temper their expectations for when the German team breaks cover in 2026.

For now though, even with an impressive team leader in Andreas Seidl, the extension of Guanyu Zhou for another year seems a bit of an uninspiring and somewhat alarming call to say the least.