Marcus Ericsson was pleased with his performance during the French Grand Prix despite finishing down in thirteenth position, with the Swede having gone into the race with a distinct disadvantage after missing out on track time in two of the three practice sessions.
A crash late in the day in the first session at the Circuit Paul Ricard left the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team driver with a heavily damaged chassis that required replacing, forcing him out of the session later in the day, while the weather prevented any meaningful running on Saturday morning.
But Ericsson made it through to the second segment of Qualifying for the first time this season and then followed that up with a good performance on race day, even though he was unable to secure his second top ten result of the year.
“I am quite happy with my race. It was a tough weekend, and having started after only running in FP1 and qualifying, we did a good job in getting on the pace during the race,” said Ericsson.
“I made a good start and I was able to evade the incident on the first lap and to gain positions. After that, I struggled with the balance of the car and didn’t advance as well as we hoped to.
“In the second half of the race, the car felt much better and things were running more smoothly. The tyres were working better, and I closed the gap to the competitors ahead. We also had a very fast pit stop again.”
Ericsson hopes Sauber come back stronger again this coming weekend in the Austrian Grand Prix, the second race of Formula 1’s first ever triple header.
“Now, we have to make sure that we understand what happened at the beginning of the race and come back even stronger in Austria next week,” said the Swede.
