Marcus Ericsson says his 2015 form started improving when he changed his mental approach and stopped trying “to set the world on fire” every grand prix weekend.
Joining Sauber after the demise of Caterham, the Swede’s sophomore campaign got off to slow start, especially in the light of rookie team-mate Felipe Nasr’s impressive debut.
Despite scoring his maiden championships points in Melbourne’s curtain-raiser with P8, Ericsson’s performance was fairly scrappy and outshone by the Brazilian’s headline-grabbing charge to fifth.
The first half of the season followed a similar pattern until the 2009 Japanese Formula 3 winner started turning the tables on Nasr, as highlighted by three consecutives points-paying finishes in Hungary, Belgium, and Italy.
Asked by F1i’s Chris Medland whether his early confirmation at Sauber for 2016 helped him revert the trend, Ericsson replied:
“I think it has helped but I think my turning point was a bit earlier than that. It was more on myself from the mental side of things.
“I guess it was a little bit difficult coming from Caterham and being always at the back, it’s so difficult in a team like that to show what you can do. Even if you do something perfectly, nobody really notices or it’s very difficult for people to notice.
“Then you come to Sauber and especially at the beginning we were really quite strong, you want so much to show what you can do, you push so hard. Compared to your team-mate as well you’re like: ‘Argh, I want to do it, I want to show him!’ I think I just overdid everything a bit and focused too much on other teams, on my team-mate, on other things.
“I think that was the thing, when I sort of accepted that I need to focus on myself, I need to try and make myself perform at my maximum and get my car to be performing the best way for me come qualifying and the race.
“When I accepted that and didn’t try to set the world on fire every time I was out on track then I think it’s obvious it started to go a bit more my way. Even though you’re so focused I could sort of relax a bit more during race weekends and that has made a big difference.”
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