Marcus Ericsson believes his Alfa Romeo Sauber Formula 1 team has made the biggest changes for the 2018 season.
Ericsson continues with Sauber for a fourth consecutive season, partnering 2017 Formula 2 champion Charles Leclerc.
The team has begun a new technical partnership with the Italian car manufacturer, as well as adopting a current power unit after spending 2017 with a year-old engine.
“Obviously some teams have changed power unit manufacturer so they will have had to change some things, but I think just looking purely at the car side I think we have made the biggest change,” Ericsson said.
“We have changed so much both mechanically and aerodynamically.
“We have a two-year newer engine, so we’re probably the ones that have the newest or most different package.”
Ericsson admitted that the team may not be able to extract the maximum from its car, considering the radical design change compared to last year’s car.
“Yeah that is a risk,” Ericsson admitted, “because we have such a different concept compared to last year we need every lap we can get to understand it.
“We can already see there is a lot of potential in it, but we need to have time to sort of explore the different set-up options and see how the car reacts to these kinds of things and we haven’t really been able to do that much this week.
“So of course for a team like us it’s not great to have this kind of weather, but next week is supposed to be good and then we need to try and do as many laps as possible and just make the most of it.”
Sauber was slowest of all the teams in the opening week of testing but was fourth in the mileage charts.
