Leclerc: Sauber's progress looks bigger than it is

Charles Leclerc believes that Sauber's progress in 2018 has looked bigger than it actually is. The Swiss team has no doubt made improvements from the start of the season, as it struggled in the opening portion of races.

However, the team has scored 18 points in the opening half of the season with Leclerc racking up 13. The Monegasque driver has reached Q2 on five occasions this year, and Q3 four times. But the 20-year-old has played down the progress of the team, stating it looks bigger than it really is.

“I think we made it look bigger than it was, even though it’s huge,” Leclerc told Autosport. “At the first race I was just not driving well, so obviously the performance was less good than it should have been because of me.

“Then from Baku until now the progress that we see is mostly because of the car, and because we progress with the car. So, this is definitely still a big step. We are now very close to Q3 in the last few Grands Prix, which is a very positive sign and it gives a lot of motivation to the whole team.”

Sauber currently lies in ninth place in the standings, 14 points ahead of Williams. And Williams' Sergey Sirotkin doesn't believe that Sauber is in any danger of being caught, stating that the Hinwil-based squad is out of reach for the rest of the year.

"I think where they [Sauber] are, they are, for sure, unreachable because they are well into the midfield," he admitted. "For us I think at the moment the key is to try, I wouldn’t say to score concrete results, but to find our concrete and strong recovery way and start to produce the things which are clearly correlated well to our expectations."

Fergal Walsh