‘I don’t know how I survived’ – Zhou Guanyu opens up on terrifying crash at the British Grand Prix

Zhou Guanyu says he is ready to race again after his terrifying crash at the British Grand Prix.

At the very start of Sunday’s race at Silverstone, Zhou’s Alfa Romeo was flipped upside-down and sent hurtling into the barriers at the first corner Abbey, after he was tagged from the side by Mercedes’ George Russell who himself had been hit by Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri.

The race was instantly red-flagged, and it took some time before the Chinese driver was removed from his car and sent in an ambulance to the medical centre, but despite the severity of the crash, Zhou was given the all-clear and discharged before the grand prix had even finished.

Just five days on from the crash, Zhou will be back behind the wheel again for this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, and he has revealed that he is pleased to be racing again so soon.

‘Honestly, Sunday night I was texting my engineers asking, “is my seat okay?”’ the 23-year-old said.

‘I’m quite happy to have a back-to-back race, because if I had a summer break just after that, that would be terrible because you would be asking the questions and I’d be thinking about it [the crash].

‘Repeated questions… even though you try to avoid it, you somehow find it somewhere. It’s good to be back straight away.’

Zhou, who is in his rookie Formula 1 season, also opened up for the first time about how the crash played out from his point of view, adding: ‘When the flip happened, the first thing I was trying to do was to release my hand off the steering wheel because you never know, you can break your hand quite easily with a crash like that.

‘I knew I’d be facing a massive impact because the car wasn’t stopping so I tried to lock myself in the safest possible position. Just bracing for the last impact.

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