Sauber doesn’t know why it saw a downturn in performance last weekend, but Marcus Ericsson believes it could be because the team didn’t understand the new updates.
After the team scored its first points of the season in Spain, Sauber was expecting strong results in Monaco, especially with a major update package strapped to the car.
But Sauber’s Spanish pace was nowhere to be seen in qualifying when Ericsson and team mate Pascal Wehrlein were slowest. Both later retired from the race.
“We were expecting after the Barcelona performance to be in the midfield fight,” Ericsson told Autosport .
“Then we were a second off the slowest midfield car in general all weekend.
“We were turning the car upside down all through the weekend, going in different directions with the set-up to try and find something.”
Sauber is still looking for the reason for its lack of pace. Ericsson believes it could be a consequence of the delayed update.
The team only brought a few new parts to Spain, with the majority arriving for the Monaco GP. The Monte Carlo street circuit isn’t the best place to test and understand new updates which Ericsson believes put Sauber on the backfoot.
“When you bring an update, you need to tune the car, but it’s tough to do that in Monaco.
“It would’ve helped us a lot to get the update in Barcelona, as we could have set the car a bit better around the update when we came to Monaco.”
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