WUHAN -- World No.7 Zheng Qinwen returned to her home tournament at the Dongfeng Voyah · Wuhan Open and secured her first career main-draw win at the event, beating Romania's Jaqueline Cristian 6-2, 6-4 on Wednesday night.

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The win is Zheng's 40th Hologic WTA Tour win of the season. She is the first Chinese woman to secure 40 wins since Li Na in 2013.

Zheng struck nine aces en route to her 1-hour and 42-minute victory, moving her past Elena Rybakina to lead the tour with 345 aces this year. 

The win moved Zheng into the Round of 16, where she will face Leylah Fernandez on Thursday. The Canadian holds a 2-0 record over Zheng. 

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Zheng, 22, is doing everything in her power to make a late-season surge up the PIF Race to the WTA Finals Leaderboard to become the first Chinese woman to qualify for the WTA Finals since Li in 2013. After a run to the China Open semifinals last week, Zheng entered the week at No.8 on the Race Leaderboard, one spot out of an automatic qualifying position, and looking to make up ground on US Open semifinalist Emma Navarro at No.7. 

Zheng was born in Shiyan, a city in the northwest of Hubei province, and moved to Wuhan to go to school and train when she was a child. She played the qualifying tournament once, as a 16-year-old wild card ranked No.697 in 2019, and lost in straight sets to Svetlana Kuznetsova. 

"I was very excited," Zheng said, recalling the match. "I thought the opponent was as strong as me, but I was too excited, too nervous. There were a lot of errors on my part.

"When I was facing professional players, I thought they were playing fast. On court it wasn't as fast as expected. It was five years ago. I am a different player now."

Zheng improved to 21-3 since her first-round loss at Wimbledon over the summer, a stretch that has included the title in Palermo, Olympic gold, a second US Open quarterfinal, and her first WTA 1000 semifinal last week in Beijing.

As she looks to improve her chances of qualifying for her first WTA Finals, Zheng is using the crowd's enthusiasm to fuel her tank, which she admits is running low after her busy summer and autumn. 

"After the Olympics I've had a really busy schedule," Zheng said. "Many big tournaments I have to play.... Mentally I'm tired after each match. I face a lot of stress. I need to deal with this stress.

"But as of now I'm feeling okay. It's like when you don't want to go to the office, you still have to go to work. I'm playing in Wuhan. This is my hometown. If it's another place, I may not want to go to work."

Earlier in the evening, No.2 seed Jessica Pegula advanced to the Round of 16 after Anastasia Potapova retired down 6-2, 2-0 due to right ankle injury. Pegula will face Wang Xinyu for a spot in the quarterfinals. The winner will play either Hailey Baptiste or Ekaterina Alexandrova.