Marcus Ericsson felt it was a positive Qualifying session at the Circuit of The Americas after the Swede set the sixteenth fastest time on Saturday afternoon.
The Sauber F1 Team have been regularly at the back of the grid in 2017, thanks mainly due to their 2016 Ferrari power unit, but during Qualifying, Ericsson managed to get ahead of Lance Stroll, Brendon Hartley and Kevin Magnussen, as well as team-mate Pascal Wehrlein, much to the delight of the twenty-seven-year-old.
Ericsson only missed out on getting through to Q2 for the first time in 2017 by 0.007 seconds, but despite this, he felt he got everything he could out of the car.
“It was a positive day for us,” said Ericsson. “During FP3 this morning we made some steps forward by bringing the tyres into the right operating window. That helped us to extract the maximum out of the car.
“I also put in a good lap at the end of Q1. It is a satisfying result compared to the last GP weekends. We are going into the race with a good feeling.”
Team-mate Wehrlein was less satisfied, particularly as he final run saw him run off track, and he ended up nineteenth fastest.
“I am not satisfied with today’s qualifying,” admitted Wehrlein. “Things were looking good yesterday, but today I did not feel comfortable with the car balance in FP3.
“At the beginning of qualifying, I started off OK but in my last lap in Q1, I went off the track. We are now looking into the data in order to make progress for tomorrow’s race.”
