Valtteri Bottas ‘shock’ revealed by Ferrari driver as Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc comparison made

Ferrari’s Zhou Guanyu has shared how he has been able to learn from Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, following on from his time working with Valtteri Bottas.

The Chinese driver is currently Ferrari’s reserve, and has had first-hand insight into seeing how Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc operate as race drivers, who he says don’t operate markedly differently from Valtteri Bottas.

Zhou Guanyu learning from Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton

Zhou spent three years with Sauber, arriving at the Swiss team as a rookie when the team raced as Alfa Romeo, where he was teamed with Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas.

Bottas, vastly more experienced than Zhou, is a seasoned race-winner from his long spell with Mercedes, and enjoyed a harmonious relationship with Zhou.

While both lost their seats for 2025 as Sauber, which has been bought by Audi ahead of a full takeover for 2026, they each found new homes for this year as Bottas returned to Mercedes as a reserve driver, with Zhou turning to Ferrari in the same role; Zhou had previously been part of the Ferrari Driver Academy a decade ago.

Zhou has spent the year on the sidelines working on helping the development of the SF-25 and carrying out sim work to aid the campaigns of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton; two highly-rated racing drivers and winners, with Hamilton being a seven-time F1 World Champion and widely regarded as one of the best drivers in the sport’s history.

Having had the chance to work with three established winners, Zhou is one of the better-placed paddock folk to be able to compare and contrast their working methods and take on the lessons that can be imparted from this knowledge, and the Chinese driver has revealed how he has done his best to seize the most of the opportunities with each.

Discussing his year with Ferrari as the team’s reserve as he targets a return to the grid as soon as possible, Zhou spoke of his enjoyment of the time out with an established frontrunning team.

“I feel like the way all three of them, the way they work, are very similar. Of course, everyone have their own way of working, but overall, I don’t see a big difference in the overall picture. So it was nice,” he said, when asked about what he’s learned from his race-winning teammates.

“In the first year with Valtteri, it was kind of a little bit of a shock for me, because I understand how important he is in terms of just building up a team and also giving a boost for the people in the factory.

“In terms of results, it comes automatically with the hard work you put in so that’s why I was able to use a lot of his knowledge and experience in Formula 1 over the years, and to understand how to put it into my side.

“Since the beginning of last year, I was able to adapt that pretty well, and now understanding the way Charles and Lewis work, there are always things you can look up to and to be learning from, and that’s what’s also very important for me.”

At Ferrari, Zhou believes, the drivers are given more time to work on their weekend potential with greater focus on unlocking what they need to perform.

“In this team, you have a lot of time you can spend at the race weekend with your engineers; the time I think you can spend is more than double than what I used to be able to, because the way I think people are scheduled are different” he said.

“Here, at a race weekend, you are focused always just on the results of driving, which is what I love, and that’s what I was not able to get with Sauber.

“I think that was missing because when you do a lot of activities aside from just focusing with your engineer group, your head goes around a little bit. We just want to focus on driving.”

While Zhou hasn’t yet secured a return to the F1 grid, and seemingly little chance of doing so for 2026, he believes his time with Ferrari has made him a far stronger driver than he was when he first arrived back at the Scuderia at the end of last year.

“Back there, we reached a brick wall,” he said.

“There was a lot of change, and to be honest, it wasn’t enjoyable, because, obviously, we had different team principles across, let’s say, a year and half. It kept changing, and every time somebody new steps in, of course, there are good things about it, but then they make a lot of changes.

“People probably don’t know but, in three years, I had three race engineers [sic], so that’s not good, because you just build up your relationships. The first year, I really enjoyed it, and suddenly he had to take another role.

“For me, I didn’t really have much power to be deciding that, and what people were doing in the background. It wasn’t so nice for drivers.”

With Ferrari making stability in the race operations a priority, Zhou said he believes this a more beneficial approach for the drivers, even for experienced hands like Hamilton.

“So, when I came here, I understand how important is the way how they build up with the race team itself. Because you start from the base, for example, Lewis, he was a little bit like me, very new to this project,” he said.

“But then he came in, he was able to stay with the same people, and then try to make his way the way, adapting his driving, the way he wanted to do. That’s really helpful for race driving because it’s so intense, so compact, you need that time to build up into a rhythm.

“That’s what here is really important for that. They have full support, and also you have a driver coach, an engineer as well that can look more into detail, so everything is more settled down and nice and organised.

“It gives you a lot more time to be focused on what you need to improve, as a driver, for your own driving and all that, rather than anything else changing in the background.

“So these things, that’s what I experienced, and I think that was the biggest factor. It made our year very difficult, with the car obviously not being competitive, but on just my side, changing engineer every year, there’s not enough time you can really spend and understand each other.”

Zhou Guanyu: I’ve learned a lot from Ferrari

Approaching the end of his year with Ferrari, the Chinese driver believes he has grown and flourished with the opportunities afforded to him this year through his sim work and TPC outings.

“Honestly, I’ve really enjoyed it,” he said.

“Firstly, it was a team that I knew more than half of the members already from the past, experience from being one of the Ferrari Academy drivers, back in the day, when I was young.

“So, it was good just to be a lot more involved now obviously in a Formula 1 project, to understand how this team is around just the race weekend, also construct-wise in the factory base is a completely new experience; it’s very different to what I had from past experience in another F1 team, in a good way.

“I feel like I learned a lot, even though this year I missed raced, I missed being on the grid. But still, I feel like, when you take that year off, you can really look at stuff from the outside, and then that makes you a better driver, to be more ready when you jump back in.

“It’s been good. The team, the people are really friendly, nice and great. The amount of fans as well, I’m doing my stuff and enjoying.”

With no racing programme alongside his reserve role in order to keep his competitive hunger assuaged, Zhou said that he had a critical choice to make for 2025, as options for racing in other categories had been on the table.

“For me, it was quite a straightforward decision, because obviously, at the end of last year, I had multiple choices of going to race in other series, but also having a reserve or third driver role,” he said.

“But it was quite clear that I wanted to take this one or two years just being in the paddock. When I’m not in the paddock, I’m off in the factory doing simulator work together with the team, understanding what they need and doing test items for them, or doing some TPC like the two years old car testing programme.

“I did a Pirelli test as well before summer. So all these things, what was in the programme, was already very important and attractive for me to keep me a bit racing fit.

“Racing in other series, I just feel like in these two years, I want to make sure that if there’s an opportunity, I’m here.

“In other series, then the opportunity goes flying away. So that’s my plan for now. But then, for sure, at some point, once I think my F1 chances are completely closed, then I’ll be open to do a series or maybe taking a different role in Formula 1 as well.”

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