Marcus Ericsson says he and Sauber have “pressed the reset button” in a bid to get on top of his recent qualifying struggles, especially compared to team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc has made it through to Q2 across the past four Grands Prix, using it as a platform to score points in three, but Ericsson has not made it out of Q1 in that stint.
Matters reached a nadir in Canada when Ericsson clipped the wall on his first Q1 push lap and was unable to set a representative time.
“We sat down after Montreal and really sort of pressed the reset button and really tried to analyse what’s been happening the last few weekends in qualifying,” he said.
“We see a bit of a trend in the Hypersoft tyres in that I seem to be struggling a bit more with that compared to Charles.
“But then also I think on set-up, on some settings we’ve worked on and improved throughout the year, in a way I think it’s been really suiting Charles quite well.
“Even though I’ve felt as well it’s been suiting me maybe it’s not been the case so now we’ve reverted to something more [like what] we started the season with.
“I felt comfortable and felt like I really had some good qualifying [sessions] and one lap performances at the beginning of the year.
“I really hope and think hopefully with that it’ll go back to a car more my liking and I will sort of regain my confidence there and we can start building again from that point, so we’ve sort of gone back quite a bit there.”
Ericsson explained that changes undertaken in Azerbaijan that enabled Leclerc to flourish have not been conducive to his own driving style.
“I think we’ve done a bit of a different philosophy on the set-up since around Baku and [after], where we have a car which is a bit more on the understeery side,” he said.
“But with system and other set-ups there’s a lot of rotation in it and that seems to suit Charles very good, the way he drives.
“I think for me we maybe need to have a bit of a different philosophy there so we’re reverting a bit more to where we were at the beginning of the year, still have a strong rear end in corner entries but doing it in a bit of a different way to what we’ve done in the last couple of races.”
