Zhou on one of his “most intense races so far.”

Guanyu Zhou was undoubtedly one of the stars of Round 5, finishing as the second of two rookies to feature on the podium in the Principality, on a weekend in which many of his fellow Monaco debutants struggled and fell foul to the slender streets of Monte Carlo.

He’d ran a tidy Feature Race as he adapted to the unique tests of the Circuit de Monaco, having never previously raced at the track. His fifth place finishing was the highest of the rookies on Race 1, and set him nicely to challenge on the reverse grid in the Sprint Race, where he would finish in third.

“It's my first time here in Monaco and I didn't expect to be on the podium at the beginning of the weekend,” said the Renault junior. “To be honest I was just trying to keep my position and wait to see if anything happened. With such a tight circuit I knew if tried to make a move and I made a mistake I might hit both cars in front, not just the car ahead of me.”

The Chinese driver had boldly claimed third place at the race start when he overtook the returning Artem Markelov. Not one to let the position go lightly, the Russian would spend the remainder of the race in Zhou’s shadow as an unrelenting hunter, an experience that Zhou will be all the better for.

“We talked about rhythm and having a great start. I'm normally pretty okay with the start so the plan was to get the jump, which I did,” he continued. “Having him behind me for the whole race is definitely one of my most intense races so far. I knew he was going for it, it's the only F2 race he's scheduled to do. I just had to cover my position and make no mistakes.”

The UNI-Virtuosi racer also revealed that he feared damage to his machine when the two came to blows early in the race. “I got hit by Artem and the weight was a bit scary. It was quite oversteery as well in the corners because of it. In the first few laps I thought I might have had a puncture, but in the end it was fine so I was sensible.”

The battle at the top of the grid was one of the tightest so far this season and merely 2.5s separated the front four of Anthoine Hubert, Louis Delétraz, Zhou and Markelov going into the latter stages of the Sprint Race, with any one of them capable of not just a podium finish, but also a race win.

“[Delétraz] locked up a few times, after the safety car restart, which gave me a chance to attack. In the end the race worked out very well, especially the last four laps. I saw Anthoine [Hubert] struggling and they were fighting, it all got pretty close, and then Artem started eating into the gap I'd made, so it was really intense - I'm really happy.”

The 19-year-old sits 5th in the Drivers’ standings on 54 points after four rounds and has helped his UNI-Virtuosi team to 2nd in the Teams’ Championship. He will look to build on his impressive start to the campaign at Le Castellet in under a month’s time.