George Russell on Zhou Guanyu’s crash: “It looked like a matter of life and death”

There were some anxious moments at Silverstone on 3 July 2022: for several minutes, no footage was shown of the serious crash involving the Chinese driver Guanyu Zhou (Alfa Romeo), which is always a cause for concern in Formula 1. This is because it has become standard practice in recent years not to show footage until it is confirmed that the driver is okay.

What had happened from the driver’s perspective? Zhou told SPEEDWEEK.com about his harrowing experience: “At first I felt a knock; I didn’t even know who had hit me (it was George Russell’s Mercedes, M.B.).”

“Then I skidded upside down on the tarmac for quite a long time and realised: the car isn’t slowing down, so the impact is going to be nasty. I tried to make myself as small as possible inside the car and keep my hands and arms as close to my body as possible so that they wouldn’t be flung about uncontrollably on impact.”

“When the car came to a halt, I didn’t know where I was. I felt liquid on my leg, and I wasn’t sure – is that my blood or is it coming from the car?”

To the horror of the fans, the Chinese driver’s Alfa Romeo had been catapulted over the tyre barriers, but was fortunately brought to a halt by a safety fence. It doesn’t bear thinking about what might have happened had that safety fence not held back the racing car, which weighed almost 800 kilograms. The car flew high enough to have crashed into the grandstand!

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The car came to rest wedged between the fence and the crash barrier behind the tyre barriers. This made it so difficult for Formula 1 doctor Dr Ian Roberts and his team to reach the driver.

Zhou continued: “The engine was still running! So I switched it off. My biggest fear was fire. I still wasn’t fully aware of just how strangely wedged my car was, but I knew that if it started to burn, it would be very difficult to get out of the car quickly. It wasn’t until later that I realised exactly where the car was.”

How did Zhou get out? “Let’s just say I wriggled my way out of the car; the marshals and medical staff helped me. The first marshal at the car asked me if everything was okay, and I gave him a thumbs-up. He then gave me a thumbs-up back.”

It’s curious what happened on the evening of the accident in 2022, when Zhou was leaving the Silverstone circuit: “I took a wrong turn and ended up stuck in a traffic jam on the M1. I found it completely bizarre – going from a high-speed crash in a Formula 1 car to being stuck in a traffic jam with thousands of fans.”

George Russell recently told F1 about the Zhou crash: “My car made contact with Zhou’s, and before I knew it, he was sliding head-first towards the gravel trap, where the car rolled over.”

“That was the most horrific crash I’d ever seen from the cockpit. I realised his car had become wedged between the fence and the tyre barrier.”

“I felt torn. On the one hand, my racing instinct said: ‘I have to carry on here.’ But then the human side was stronger. I just had to go over there and see if he was all right. To me, it looked like a matter of life and death; I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for him. But I had to go there.”

George Russell sieht nach, ob es Zhou gut geht

Foto: XPB

Zhou Guanyu again: “I only heard later that George Russell had rushed to the scene of the accident. I thanked him later for his sporting and noble gesture.”