After leaving Sauber, Guanyu Zhou is returning to Ferrari – in 2025, the Chinese driver will share the role of reserve driver in Maranello with Antonio Giovinazzi
Guanyu Zhou’s future is clear a few weeks before the start of the 2025 Formula One season. After the Chinese driver was not offered a new contract at Sauber, Ferrari has now officially confirmed that he is joining the Scuderia as a reserve driver.
This is not a big surprise, as there were rumors as early as the end of 2024 that Zhou might be drawn back to Maranello. The now 25-year-old was already part of the Ferrari junior academy from 2015 to 2018.
Other teams are also said to have been interested in signing Zhou as a reserve driver. Ultimately, however, he chose the Scuderia, where he will share the job with Antonio Giovinazzi, also a former Sauber driver.
Curious: for the 2022 season, Zhou had replaced Giovinazzi at Sauber (then still under the name Alfa Romeo). In 2025, the two drivers will share the Ferrari job, with the Italian also competing for the Scuderia in the World Endurance Championship (WEC).
Zhou, on the other hand, revealed at the end of 2024 that he is not interested in any other racing series apart from Formula 1. At the time, Zhou said that his “top priority, and I have always said this, is to return to the starting lineup.”
Among other things, he sees chances of getting a job at Cadillac in 2026. The chances could not be bad, because Graeme Lowdon, who has since been officially confirmed as team principal there, is also Zhou’s personal manager.
After Zhou left the Ferrari junior academy at the end of 2018, he joined the Alpine junior team in 2019, but made it to Formula One in 2022 with Alfa Romeo. He spent a total of three years in the top tier with the Hinwil-based team.
On his Formula 1 debut in Bahrain in 2022, he scored a point by finishing tenth, but he ended the season with 6:49 points, more than clearly behind his much more experienced teammate Valtteri Bottas.
In 2024, Zhou was able to win the internal duel for the first time with 4:0 championship points. But his eighth place in Qatar, the only top-10 result for Sauber in the entire season, came too late to get a new contract.
