Ahead of his F1 debut in 2022, many dismissed Zhou Guanyu as a pay driver hopelessly out of his depth and unlikely to last a full season. Such doubts and criticisms have long since evaporated, and the sport's only Chinese driver has more than proven himself.
In fact, so far this season Zhou has out-qualified and beaten his vastly more experienced Alfa Romeo team mate Valtteri Bottas in two of the first three races, and finished in the points in the last outing in Australia.
That's all very good news for the team, with Alfa Romeo's head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar making his positive verdict on 23-year-old from Shanghai crystal clear.
"I think Zhou is raising the game, and I would say now they are both quite even," he said when asked how Zhou compared with Bottas so far this season.
"That's good for us," he continued. "In the last two qualifying sessions they are close to Q3 [in qualifying], both of them. And that's good for the team.
Zhou himself has spoken of growing in confidence over his first season and the winter off-season period. "It's good to be feeling confident for the first race of the year which I wasn't last year this time," he said in Melbourne.
"He's more confident," Pujolar agreed. "And then working with Valtteri as well and that's how we can [make improvements] with both drivers together, it gives him confidence as well.
Zhou's first points of 2023 came partly as a result of good luck when he survived the mayhem of a late red flag restart in Melbourne in which other drivers including both Alpine team mates ended up crashing out.
Up to that point Zhou had been looking set to finish in 13th place, but the late stoppage triggered by Kevin Magnussen's accident saw him take advantage of the chaos and cross the line in ninth place for two points.
That was proof of just how close the mid-field teams currently are, as they battle to pick up 'best of the rest' points behind Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and now Aston Martin.
"It’s clear there are three or four teams clearly ahead of the rest – but then I think from P8 downwards it is very tight.
"Everybody can be grabbing these final points finishes, which is the target," he said. "We're not too far away from this, so it's just the little details that can really make the difference in the midfield."
Bottas finished in P8 in the season opener in Bahrain but has been struggling to get close to the top ten since then. The Finn admitted that they were having trouble finding their form this season.
"I'm sure there's still a bit of investigation going on with different things," he commented after the Australian GP. "We really need to understand as a team now what's going on."
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