Sauber driver Marcus Ericsson says the team has made “really good progress” in understanding how to get Pirelli’s tyres to operate within the right window, following a day of testing in Bahrain.
Formula 1 teams reconvened at the Sakhir Circuit for the opening day of in-season testing and Ericsson was tasked with conducting duties in the C36-Ferrari.
Ericsson, yet to score a point this season, finished only 11th quickest, but completed the most laps across the nine hours of running, logging 106 laps, and was encouraged by the work undertaken.
“It was a very good test day, we completed our programme and I did the most laps of everyone,” he commented.
“We were able to run through a lot of different set-ups and we worked quite hard on the tyres to get them to work as we want in the right window.
“So I think we made some really good progress there, which is very promising for the next couple of races.
“Also on the set-up side we have been scanning through some different settings, which we haven’t had the chance to do so far this season.
“On that side too we found interesting data for improving the performance.”
Pascal Wehrlein will return to the cockpit on Wednesday, providing the German with more track time, having missed races in Australia and China as he recovered from injury-induced fitness problems.
