In 2004 China hosted its first Formula 1 race. In the crowd, cheering on Fernando Alonso, was the boy who would become the country’s first grand prix racer. GP Racing caught up with Zhou Guanyu in his adopted second home of London…
WORDS STUART CODLING PORTRAITS ALISTER THORPE
ONE floor below ground, in the crowded pedestrian vestibule connecting London’s Piccadilly Circus with Leicester Square – still bustling with tourists despite the Stygian murk enveloping the capital – lies Zhou Guanyu’s favourite eatery in the city. It tells you much about China’s first Formula 1 racer that this is no exclusive, highfalutin, Michelinstarred establishment but a busy, friendly Szechuan-style diner: Haidilao Hot Pot, a chain with hundreds of branches around the globe.
As we’re guided to a quiet back room, it’s clear Zhou is a frequent flyer here. Every member of staff gives him a cheery greeting and he browses the iPad-based menu with a confident sweep of the fingers.
“Anyone got any allergies, things they don’t like?”
We leave ourselves in his hands on the comestibles front and relocate to the sauce counter, where a seemingly boundless quantity of ingredients awaits, from oils and soy sauce to leaves, nuts, chillies and herbs. Zhou fills two pots, decanting into one of them a substantial quantity of minced garlic followed by a good glug of soy sauce.
“This is excellent with the beef,” he assures GP Racing, though we’re glad we’re sitting at the opposite side of the table…
After a five-year hiatus, the Chinese Grand Prix has returned to the calendar this season. As our columnist Mark Gallagher explained in the February issue, F1’s relationship with the world’s most populous nation is a complex one: former ‘ringmaster’ Bernie Ecclestone was determined to break into the market there, believing prosperous Chinese companies could fill the sponsorship void being created by tobacco’s enforced departure. Instead it became apparent that F1 needed China more than China needed F1. Initially tickets had to be given away to encourage spectators to make the schlep to the vast purpose-built circuit on what was, at the time, the undeveloped fringes of Shanghai’s great metropolis.
One of those people was a very young Zhou Guanyu.
“My earliest memories of F1 are of the Alonso-Schumacher era – I went to the first Chinese Grand Prix in 2004,” he says. “It was fascinating… the speed, the noise of those V10s. You could feel them as well as hear them, before you even got into the gra
