Formula One looks to unlock new riches with China’s rising star, hopes Zhou Guanyu can be sport’s answer to Yao Ming
- F1 has struggled to resonate in China and lags far behind sports like basketball or football in popularity
- The sport has not been helped by the cancellation of the Shanghai Grand Prix for a fourth year
At Formula One’s inaugural Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai in 2004, five-year-old Zhou Guanyu was in the stands cheering on his idol, Spain’s Fernando Alonso.
Now, Zhou is competing against Alonso for Alfa Romeo, after he became China’s first full-time F1 racer last year. As one of the country’s rising sporting stars, Zhou has already attracted millions in sponsorship deals for global brands, and is also the key to helping F1 finally unlock the potential that the world’s second-largest economy holds.
“Formula One is basically my life, my world, my dream,” said Zhou at Alfa Romeo F1 Team’s factory in Hinwil, Switzerland during the long April break before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. “As a kid, that was the only dream that I wanted to achieve.”
F1 has struggled to resonate in China and lags far behind sports like basketball or football in popularity, in part because of to a lack of motorsport history in the country and limited broadcast coverage.
The cancellation of the Chinese Grand Prix for a fourth year in 2023 further set F1 back, while Netflix, whose Drive to Survive series has boosted the sport’s popularity around the world, isn’t available in China – though Zhou’s horrific crash at Silverstone last year features in it.
“When you get a Chinese person competing at the top level, it’s probably the quickest way to develop relevance and accelerate the fan base,” said Mark Thomas, managing director at a China-focused sport marketing consultancy S2M Consulting, who has been involved with motorsport in the country for 20 years. “He’s a sponsor’s dream.”