Zhou Guanyu to start Sunday’s race from pit-lane

After a collision in Saturday’s sprint race, Zhou Guanyu will start Sunday’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix from the pitlane after his Alfa Romeo crew completed repairs and adjustments to his car.

Zhou, who started his debut F1 sprint race in 14th position, collided with Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri on the first lap.

Although the event was noticed, the stewards swiftly determined that no further inquiry was required. However, after the sprint race, his crew had to repair Zhou’s heavily damaged Alfa Romeo, resulting in a pitlane start penalty.

“In repairing Car 24 subsequent to the sprint session, car 24 was found to have breached article 40.6 of the FIA Formula 1 sporting regulations as the car used during the sprint session was not covered and ready for FIA seals within two hours of the sprint session,” the statement from the stewards read.

“Furthermore, in breach of article 40.9, the Competitor was found to have continued to work on the car unsupervised while under parc ferme conditions.”

“The competitor admitted that modifications were made to the car.”

“In any event, given the lack of supervision, the stewards would have been entitled to draw an inference that modifications were made to the car and/or changes were made to the set-up of the suspension while the car was to have been held under parc ferme conditions.”

Alfa Romeo would have been able to choose a set-up based on data collected in both FP2 and qualifying, whereas the rest of the field would have had to rely solely on FP1 data before being locked under parc ferme restrictions ahead of qualifying on Friday afternoon.