Ericcson believes Sauber should have more confidence in its potential

Sauber has scored points with both cars already this year, something it last managed in 2015. But Ericsson said the team had gone into some recent races expecting not to be competitive.

“In Barcelona I think everyone was saying this track wouldn’t suit us,” he said.

“Even within the team everyone was saying it’s going to be tough.

“And I said ‘look guys, we cannot go into the weekend thinking that – I think we can be there and mix it up’. That was my feeling when we went to Barcelona and it was the same going to Monaco.

“On Wednesday, before the weekend started, we knew this track could be difficult for us. But I said I think we should be in the mix because we’re in the midfield now, we score points on a quite regular basis. We need to have that mindset as well.

“If we have the mindset that this will be a difficult track for us, it doesn’t work like that. We need to be going into the weekends confident that we can be in the fight and that’s how we should go forward now for every weekend.”