Marcus Ericsson says a recent change of mindset to become more inward-looking has aided his prospects, after admitting he became “dragged” towards following Sauber team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Ericsson held the upper hand during the opening trio of races but a tweak in car set-up and approach in Azerbaijan allowed the momentum to shift to rookie Leclerc.
Leclerc shone with a sequence of Q2 and Q3 appearances mid-season that he used as a platform to score points, out-qualifying Ericsson from Azerbaijan through Germany.
Ericsson ended that run in Hungary and qualified just one spot behind Leclerc in Belgium, albeit with both hampered by mechanical problems during Q2.
Expanding on the situation, Ericsson said: “I think sometimes it’s easy to look at your team-mate, you need to look at the data to see where you can improve, but sometimes you maybe do that too much.
“And also set-up because Charles has been very strong, especially on one-lap pace, it’s easy to go in that direction because he’s doing very well.
“But you have to remember we are different drivers and want a bit different things even though the base set-up is usually quite similar we want different tweaks on the set-up.
“Sometimes I think this year I’ve been dragged a bit too much into following his set-up instead of following myself and my feeling.
“He had some strong qualifying [results], I didn’t for different reasons, you lose confidence, then get into a bad rhythm in qualifying, overdrive a bit, I had some issues with the car in some qualifying [sessions], so it’s a combination of things.
“It’s like that for every driver now and then you have bad form and need to believe in yourself and stay strong and work hard and hopefully this weekend is a turning point.”
Ericsson will start the Belgian Grand Prix from 13th position.
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