Sauber driver Marcus Ericsson believes he can match team-mate Charles Leclerc, given a clean weekend, after a crash which curtailed his running during Friday practice ultimately thwarted his hopes of a points finish at the French Grand Prix.
Ericsson spun through Beausset during Friday’s opening session at Paul Ricard and a fire that ignited after he hit the wall caused substantial damage, ruling him out of second practice.
Heavy rain that fell denied drivers dry running for all bar the opening moments of the third session, and while Ericsson made it into Q2, he reckoned the lack of laps in practice cost him during the first stint of the race.
“I think the crash in FP1 hurt my weekend quite a lot,” he said, having finished 13th.
“I bring quite a lot of positives anyway as in my qualifying was probably my best qualifying of the year with zero preparation almost. I think I had eight push laps going into the session.
“To put it into Q2 was really a good effort. In Q2 I was one tenth off Charles after the first run but on the second run I just did a mistake.
“Then the race, first part of the race I think maybe hurt me a bit I didn’t have many laps [experience], I was struggling a bit in the first stint.
“I didn’t really get the tyres to work after the Safety Car so I lost [Stoffel] Vandoorne and Brendon [Hartley] in the first stint.”
Ericsson’s team-mate Leclerc is currently enjoying a strong run of form, having scored points in four of the last five Grands Prix, including in France, where the Ferrari-backed youngster qualified eighth and raced to 10th.
Ericsson, though, remains adamant he can match Leclerc going forward.
“The biggest problem with the weekend was the crash in FP1 so that puts you on the backfoot and you’re always playing catch-up,” he stressed.
“Also FP1 was going well, I was on the pace, so that was a step forward as well, it felt like I was on the same level as Charles during FP1 before the crash whereas the last few weekends he’s been a bit stronger.
“I think the changes we did prior to the weekend with set-up, system settings and stuff seemed to be in the right direction for me so I think we’ve learned some stuff there that we can bring with us to Spielberg.
“If we can have a clean weekend there without any crashes and other problems it’ll be interesting to see if I can keep up with Charles because he’s obviously extremely strong at the moment and doing a really good job with the car we have.
“With a clean weekend I hope I can be at the same level.”
