The Chinese racer managed his best F1 qualifying effort to date on Saturday to start fifth but was swamped by the pack after a sluggish getaway, before running into the back of Daniel Ricciardo's AlphaTauri under braking for Turn 1.
Ricciardo then inadvertently punted Esteban Ocon into Pierre Gasly, with both Alpine cars eliminated as a result.
Zhou copped front wing damage in the impact and also incurred a five-second penalty from the stewards, who decreed that he "simply did not slow down enough when approaching the corner, resulting in an unnecessary collision".
After finishing a lapped 16th, Zhou said Alfa Romeo would look into his startline issue.
"I have no idea, I need to have a look," Zhou replied when asked about his start problem. "I was holding the revs before the four lights and then I just lost all the response from the throttle, so I started basically [with] zero throttle.
"Really disappointed because I think it could be really good at that point at the start."
He later added: "We need to see more in detail what happens there because this is strange, it never happened before at all. I tried to recover before the five lights, tried to go full throttle, but nothing was happening unfortunately, so I had to do a pull-away.
"So my start was actually a pull-away, it wasn't actually a start. That's why you saw my car wasn't moving."
Source: Autosport