Ferrari have brought in their second new driver for the 2025 season, naming Zhou Guanyu in a reserve role.
The Chinese driver left Formula 1 as a full-time competitor at the end of 2024 but has returned to play an important role in Ferrari’s title charge.
The Scuderia already made headlines worldwide at the start of last season when they announced the blockbuster signing of Lewis Hamilton for 2025.
Leaving Mercedes as the most successful driver of all time, there is renewed hope that the 40-year-old Brit could win his record-breaking eighth world title in red this year.
Helping him do that will be Zhou, who will play a crucial role in helping Ferrari develop their SF-25 challenger.
The 25-year-old was a Ferrari academy product from 2015 to 2018 before joining F1 for three seasons from 2022 to 2024.
He became the sport’s first ever Chinese driver, and collected 16 points across 68 races.
That may not look great, but Sauber, who he spent his three years with, were by far the slowest team in 2024 and Zhou collected all four of their points for the season with an impressive eighth place finish in Qatar.
Previous to that he also worked in a reserve role with Alpine and their previous iteration, Renault, so is no stranger to helping support and develop an F1 team.
The Shanghai native’s work will be largely dedicated towards simulator and test work, helping improve the car set up and provide crucial feedback.
That will be particularly important this year with Ferrari on the up, while pace setters for the past three seasons, Red Bull, are seemingly going backwards, opening the door for Hamilton to compete for their first title since 2007.
Zhou will partner fellow Ferrari academy driver Antonio Giovinazzi, and they will likely both be busy given that 2026 sees another major set of rule changes that could well shake up the grid.
Hamilton has regularly praised the role of reserve drivers, including Mick Schumacher, the son of the legendary Michael, who filled that role with his previous team Mercedes.
With Mercedes struggling to get to grips with their new car during the 2023 season, they miraculously turned things around for a double podium in Spain in the seventh race of the campaign, and Hamilton and teammate George Russell both credited Schumacher for the upturn.
“Friday was a real struggle with the balance, it was way out of the window,” Hamilton said at the time. “It was very hard to drive, very unpredictable. And then we did some great work overnight.
“We’ve got a great team, with Mick back in the simulator on Friday night, and he did some great work, which helped us get on the right track on Saturday.”
Hamilton has already had his first outings in red, debuting at their test track in a 2023 model before a private test in Barcelona which saw a minor crash.
Next up he will get a go in the 2024 car during a Pirelli tyre test, before taking to this season’s challenger when official pre-season testing begins on February 26 in Bahrain.
The 2025 campaign then officially gets underway with free practice in Australia on Friday March 14.