Ericsson believes new owners will put Sauber back on track

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Sauber F1 driver Marcus Ericsson says that he is hopeful that the new owners will give the team the financial boost that it needs to get back to its former strength after subsisting hand-to-mouth for the last year.

"I don’t see any reason why Sauber can’t be successful again," the Swedish driver told F1i in an exclusive interview this week. "Successful means fighting for points consistently and better things.

"Force India have shown that they can score podiums with a small team and small budget and I don’t see why Sauber cannot do the same.

"I think there is good potential here. I think the facilities they have in Sauber is really amazing - they have state of the art facilities - and now with the new owners they will use that for the development of the cars more, so I think there is a good future for Sauber."

Ericsson, who joined the team in in 2015 after a season at the now-defunct Catherham, admitted that he was as much in the dark about the new owners as everyone else.

"It’s a Swiss investment company as much as I understand. They seem pretty serious about it but I don’t know much more than that.

"I think as it is now everything is quite new and I don’t think many people in the team know much about what they want.

"All that I know is that it seems like they are very serious about it and what to make this team good and profitable as well, with the whole business.

"I speak to Monisha [Kaltenborn, team principal] a bit about and she seems really positive and thinks it is really good. I trust that and that’s the main thing."

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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.