Bottas vs Zhou: All 2024 Sauber Head To Head Stats

Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu race together for the newly branded Kick Sauber in the 2024 Formula One World Championships.

After Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi departed the Alfa Romeo team after the 2021 season, a new line-up of drivers was put together, consisting of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, who have been driving for the third consecutive season together, in what is now a rebranded team, Kick Sauber.

Previously, the Finnish driver spent five seasons in Mercedes after driving for Williams for four seasons. He recorded two second and two third place finishes in the World Drivers' Championships, and move to Sauber was a new page in his book.

On the other hand, for Zhou, driving for Alfa Romeo (Sauber) was his first experience in F1, after previously winning the F3 Asian Championship and finishing third in Formula 2.

In their first two seasons together, Bottas managed to outscore his teammate on both occasions. In 2022, he scored 49 points, compared to Zhou's 6, and while his points total dropped to only 10 in 2023, Zhou's stayed at 6.

The first race of the 2024 season was certainly assessed with mixed emotions for Sauber. On the one hand, they qualified 16th and 17th on Friday, and things were looking quite bleak.

But on Saturday, their race pace proved to be quite strong, and that resulted in a very good 11th-place finish for Zhou, who was only one place away from points.

However, Bottas' race was destroyed by a mistake from the mechanics in the box, which resulted in over a 50-second pit stop, causing the Finnish driver to lose any hope about competing for points at the Bahrain Grand Prix. He finished the race 19th.

Zhou crashed his car during the final practice session and couldn't have it repaired in time for the race, which meant he had to start the Saturday race in Jeddah from the last place.

On the other hand, he didn't start too far from Bottas, who didn't make it out of Q1. In the race, Zhou chose a suboptimal pit strategy, which cost him time.

The Finnish driver also lost a lot of time as he got stuck in the DRS train behind Kevin Magnussen, who intentionally slowed down all the drivers behind him. In the end, Bottas finished in P16, and his Chinese teammate finished in P17.

Zhou and Bottas had a terrible Australian Grand Prix, but it wasn't because of their result, as that was in-line with where they finished during the first two races of the season.

However, their team once again struggled during the pit-stops, producing two incredibly long stops, one for each driver, which saw them lose out on any chance to score points in Melbourne.

As a result, Zhou finished only 15th, one place behind his teammate, who recorded his, at the time, best result of the season, crossing the finish line ini P14.

The race at the Suzuka Circuit brought the first retirement of the season for Sauber Kick, as Zhou wasn't able to finish the race because of a gearbox issue, ending the race already after 12 laps.

Bottas, on the other hand, turned a start from the 13th place to a 14th-place finish, but still it was another point-less weekend for the team.

Zhou was certainly happy that the first Sprint weekend of the season was held in his home country, and it showed in the Sprint Shootout. He qualified 10th, while his teammate was even better, taking 9th place in SQ3.

However, when it came to the Sprint race, the home driver used that extra bit of motivation to his advantage, finishing 9th in the Spring, which, unfortunately for him and thousands of fans in Shanghai, wasn't enough to earn that one point rewarded for P8. Bottas, on the other hand, finished the Sprint in P12.

But Sauber once again showed that they were strong at the Shanghai International Circuit in the qualifying for the Grand Prix. Although Zhou failed to replicate the early success, failing to get out of Q1 and placing 16th, Bottas got into Q3 and put his Sauber Kick in 10th place.

But the race ended terribly for the Finnish driver, who had hopes of finishing in the points, as on Lap 20, his engine stopped working and he was forced to retire the car. Zhou, on the other hand, wasn't able to find more pace in his car in front of the home crowd, finishing 14th.