Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsSauber

Monza ‘my best race in F1’ - Ericsson

Marcus Ericsson believes his performance at the Italian Grand Prix was his “best race in F1 so far” despite losing a position at the final corner.

The Sauber driver was running close behind Nico Hulkenberg for the majority of the race, with the two battling over seventh position at Monza. On the final lap, Ericsson made a slight mistake out of Ascari and Daniel Ricciardo snatched eighth from him at the exit of Parabolica but the Swede told F1i he is focusing on the positives of the weekend.

“I think it was my best race in F1 so far with a bittersweet ending to it of course, losing a position on the last lap at the last corner,” Ericsson said. “That’s never fun, it’s very frustrating, but now when it’s been a while after the race, looking at the big picture I’m very happy with my performance.”

And Ericsson says Sauber has made a clear step forward in recent races since receiving an updated Ferrari power unit, with the team proving even more competitive than he expected.

“In Monza I didn’t expect us to be on a level where we could actually fight the Force Indias for the whole race and I actually think we were quicker at parts of the race as well. But especially the Force India in a straight line is very strong, so even though I was in the DRS a lot, I couldn’t really get a run on [Hulkenberg]. I needed him to do a small mistake but he’s an experienced guy and he didn’t really make any mistakes.

“So it was a bit frustrating to not get past because I think if I got past I could have pulled away a little bit from him. But overall we need to look at the big picture, we’ve scored points again, we’ve actually been fighting the Force India for the whole race and that for sure is big progress compared to where we’ve been a couple of races back.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.