Sauber technical director Simone Resta hopes the Swiss outfit's ongoing progress will enable both its drivers to fight for a spot in Q3 in the upcoming races.
Sauber's performance level has markedly improved this season on the back of a significant management and financial restructuring that took place in 2017.
The team's partnership with Alfa Romeo and its closer ties with Ferrari - not to mention the hiring of former Scuderia man Resta - also added to a productive mix that has seen the Hinwil squad nicely move up the grid.
Like its rivals, Sauber has now switched the majority of its resources to its 2019 design, although the team believes there is still more to extract from its current C37 car.
"I hope we will be progressing a little bit in the next races and that we will be closer and closer to Q3 with both cars," said Resta.
"The trend so far has been good. I think it’s fair to say that we are slowing down our development rate for the time being, and we are concentrating mostly on next year’s car.
"That is a big challenge but also a big opportunity for us to close even further the gap to the big [teams]."
While Ferrari-bound rookie Charles Leclerc earned himself a spot in the top-10 Saturday shootout on three occasions this season, Marcus Ericsson has yet to access the final Q3 qualifying segment.
The Swede admits the team's performance fell short of expectations at F1's recent high-speed venues Spa and Monza, his challenge in Italy not helped by the massive crash sustained in FP2.
"I think in general we were a bit slower than expected, we thought we were going to be stronger on a track like [Monza], Ericsson was quoted as saying by Crash.net.
"But to be fair I think both Spa and at Monza with the lower downforce tracks we’ve been struggling a bit more," he said.
"As a team, we are eager to bounce back and we are determined to fight for a good result again. I look forward to being back in Singapore."
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