Ericsson optimistic over Sauber direction

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Marcus Ericsson is in a positive mood heading to the United States Grand Prix, and believes that things are finally looking up for Sauber after a troubled spell for the team.

Ericsson has indicated that he expects to stay at the team for another season and that the team is now making progress developing its car since the takeover by Longbow Finance put the squad on a more secure financial footing.

"We are in a bit of a transition as well with new people coming in and doing their thing," he explained. "It’s not going to work perfectly overnight, so we need to give all these new people some time to do their thing with the team and their influence and it’s getting there.

"It’s definitely moving in the right direction and I think Kuala Lumpur was a bit of a better weekend competition-wise for us than Suzuka but still I think we went from being quite far off on Friday to being a lot better on race day.

"We sort of had to work a bit harder there than last week but we were in the midfield fight."

Ericsson added that he believes that the long-awaited upgrades to the car that have finally been introduced over the last few weeks are also steps in the right direction.

"We had a few updates on the floor and it’s been an improvement but like I said we’ve been struggling a bit more with the car balance," he said.

"In Kuala Lumpur already from Friday the car was working really good and we got the package to really start working together. I think the tarmac there and the smooth surface really played in our favour.

"[In Japan] we thought we were going to be able to bring most of that set-up that we used in Kuala Lumpur and just put it on the car and go out and continue that form here, but the tarmac here is quite different, the roughness, and also it’s a bit more bumpy.

"Obviously the temperatures were quite different and all that just made it a bit more difficult for us. It just took a bit of time to find the right way and we went a bit up and down with the set-up throughout the free practice sessions.

"It will be interesting to see in Austin. We need to analyse these two weekends now and see where we need to start in Austin because where we were in Kuala Lumpur when we were quite competitive and where we were yesterday and today is a bit different.

"We need to see which way we need to go starting in Austin to really maximise that weekend.”

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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.