It speaks volumes about the rapid rise of motor racing in mainland China that when Zhou Guanyu was born in 1999, the sport barely existed. Fast-forward just 22 years and on Sunday, Zhou will become the country’s first full-time Formula One driver when he climbs into his Alfa Romeo at the Bahrain Grand Prix – and on the ground in mainland China there are now more than 100 motorsport events staged every year . “There’s been a huge step in China in terms of knowledge of motorsports among regular people,” Zhou said. “There had already started to be quite a lot of people around the sport and trying to promote it when the Shanghai Grand Prix started [in 2004] but obviously that changed everything. Hopefully now we can help change things even more.” Zhang Tao has had a front-row seat as motorsports have developed in China, from his early days in the late 1990s as a rally driver and on to the many hats he now wears, including as deputy secretary general of the Federation of Automobile and Motorcycle of the People’s Republic of China. Zhang easily remembers the days when mainland China knew of the famed Macau Grand Prix, but it didn’t know much else about the world of fast cars. That though is changing and motorsports is now “growing up quickly in China”. The Macau Grand Prix has been staged in the former Portuguese colony since 1954 – and has over the years hosted an array of drivers who would go on for F1 glory, among them the late-great Brazilian Ayrton Senna, Germany’s Michael Schumacher and current stars Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. China’s Zhou Guanyu keen to temper expectations ahead of F1 debut in Bahrain Its organisers lent their experience to China’s increasing forays in motorsports, including the building of the Zhuhai International Circuit in the neighbouring city in southern China. There was word initially that the Zhuhai track might join the Formula 1 circuit but in 1999 it failed the sport’s official standards test. Regardless, Zhang said, motorsport had started to spread. Zhuhai now hosts any number of annual races, and tracks have sprung up over the years as far afield as Ordos in Inner Mongolia. “First there was Macau, then the China Rally started back in the late 1990s and later we started to develop other series such as the China Touring Car Championship and China Formula Four,” he said. “So we have team championships, including karting and off-road, drifting and drag racing. The goal ahead is to have a series that is run just for Chinese manufactured cars, Chinese brands. The situation now is that we are not very far away from seeing this happen.” What’s also helped China embrace motorsport has been the astonishing growth in the country’s car industry, Zhang said. From being virtually non-existent in 1990, the Chinese car market grew to become the largest in the world by around 2009 and it now accounts for sales of around 21.5 million passenger vehicles annually, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers . “When I was very young – and I was born in 1978 – my parents would say ‘Can you imagine that some day we might have our own car, parked in front of our house?’,” Zhang said. “China changed and people everywhere have their own cars, and second cars because automobiles are not as expensive as they were. It used to be thought that motorsports were just for the rich. Now they are for everybody. “There was a time even in the 1990s even to pay for the petrol you need to race you had to have a letter and to get authorisation from the government. So to race you needed a lot of letters. All that has changed, the whole economics of the country have changed since then.” Enjoying my new ride! 🔵 pic.twitter.com/tsjnhYtOeM — 周冠宇 | Zhou Guanyu 🇨🇳 (@ZhouGuanyu24) February 21, 2022 The bosses at Alpha Romeo have made no secret of the fact that part of the reason they signed Zhou – along with his undoubted talent shown as he has climbed through the ranks of Formula racing – was the sponsorship he can likely attract. Team boss Frederic Vasseur said the deal might move the Italian giants on to the “front page” in terms of sponsorship in F1, while an industry report claimed Zhou could attract as much as €30 million in deals. There’s also the fact he can help share the joy when it comes to promoting Alfa Romero’s own spread as a brand. And, on cue, we saw Zhou quickly post a picture on social media that sees him straddling his shiny new Alpha The driver is himself fully aware of what his presence in Formula One could mean to motorsports back home. “I’ve just been out there chasing my dream but now I can share this dream,” Zhou said. And Zhang knows that, too, pointing out that the F1 rookie now has the opportunity “to show China what is possible”.