Marcus Ericsson staying optimistic for Sauber

Marcus Ericsson is feeling optimistic over the future of Sauber and that they will pull out of the slump they are currently in.

Sauber have not yet scored a point this season, and sit last in the constructors standings. The future of their two drivers have not yet been confirmed although it is expected that Ericsson and team-mate Felipe Nasr will stay from the 2017 season.

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Sauber were recently taken over by Longbow Finance and Ericsson explains that the team are adapting to the new changes.

"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. "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.

Ericsson added that he expects an "interesting" weekend at Austin, where the team go in search of their first points finish of the season.

"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.”