Sauber team boss Fred Vasseur has underlined the role Marcus Ericsson had in pushing Charles Leclerc during his first season in Formula 1.

Though the Monegasque was largely considered the superior driver at the Swiss team this year, something that was also reflected in the Drivers' standings, the relative performance between the pair was relatively close.

And though Sauber ultimately dropped Ericsson for Kimi Raikkonen, with Antonio Giovinazzi taking the Ferrari junior seat that was filled by Leclerc, Vasseur believes the Swede was a very strong asset to the squad.

“I think he [Charles] did a very good job also because Marcus was improving,” the Frenchman was quoted by PlanetF1.

“If you consider Marcus compared to last year, I think he made a huge step forward.

“When he hit the track in Melbourne he was six kilos lighter than last year and from the beginning, he did a step forward compared to last year.

“Even the last part of the season he was consistently in the same lap time as Charles.

“He was in front in [qualifying in] Sao Paulo, just behind in Austin and it was very helpful for Charles also to have someone as a reference like Marcus.”

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For 2019, Ericsson has headed to IndyCar and will continue in a reserve driver role at Sauber though he has largely played down that position.

Perhaps the decision to maintain him can be explained by what Vasseur picked out as the 28-year-old's best attribute.

“Marcus also has the advantage of very good technical feedback and he helped us a lot from the start of the season to take decisions on the technical side,” the Sauber boss noted.

“When he joined F1 coming from F2, it’s not easy to have a reference on the performance.”

Max Verstappen will not get any preferential treatment over Pierre Gasly at Red Bull in the beginning, according to motorsport advisor Helmut Marko.

The Dutchman has been seen as slowly increasing his authority over the Anglo-Austrian team since joining in mid-2016 with some suggesting that growing influence led partially to Daniel Ricciardo leaving for Renault.

With Gasly arriving from Toro Rosso, it is thought that would give Red Bull the perfect opportunity to fully support their perceived 'golden boy' but Marko insists that won't be the case if the Frenchman performs as expected.

“Gasly comes as a youngster so it’s very clear that he has to adhere to the rules of Red Bull Racing,” he was quoted by PlanetF1.

“It’s easy: Max is much more familiar with the team. Gasly is free to race, he just needs to show performance. They are equal.”

The general consensus of the pending battle between the two is that Verstappen should have the advantage anyway over his slightly older new teammate but Gasly vows to not back down.

"I'm not afraid, it's up to me to make a place for myself in the team," he said. "Max is obviously a strong personality, he's well established in the team and has more experience than me.

"He's got more experience with the team. He is who he is, and it will be up to me make my place.

"I'm not like Daniel, I'm someone different. I'm not like Max. I've got my own personality."

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Red Bull as a team are also heading into 2019 with a genuine belief that they could provide a season-long challenge to Mercedes and Ferrari for the title.

“The second half of the season makes us extremely positive about the development of the chassis,” Marko declared. “Clearly we have the best.

“[As for] Max, he has also improved, making no mistakes since Paul Ricard.”

Romain Grosjean has promised not to repeat the same mistakes which almost cost him his Haas drive in the first half of 2018.

Despite having one of the strongest midfield cars on the grid, it wasn't until a fourth-place finish in Austria that the Frenchman scored his first points of the season.

Of course, he was unlucky not to score in Melbourne after the pit-stop blunder by his team but a silly crash behind the Safety Car in Baku and a dangerous spin on Lap 1 in Spain caused flashbacks to the Grosjean seen in 2012.

“I cannot make the same mistakes as I did last season,” he said. “I don’t think I would pardon myself if I had another start of the season as I had (in 2018).

“Definitely, a lot learned this year, understanding what had happened.”

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A crash with Carlos Sainz at Silverstone almost proved to be the final straw with Haas but the more consistent performances returned and were enough to warrant a fourth year with the American squad.

“I remember the week before the German Grand Prix, I called my manager and I said ‘I’m back’,” he noted. “Even before driving the car I said ‘I’m back’ and I was back.

“It was just like everything went in the right place and it was like ‘f**k, this, this, this, this and sort that out’ and I moved on.

“It was a great experience: things that you don’t even realise that can bother you.”

Charles Leclerc has set himself the sensible target of earning "a couple of Grand Prix wins" during his first season with Ferrari in 2019.

Expectations are very high for the Monegasque after a very strong rookie year with Sauber earned him an immediate promotion for next year, becoming the third-youngest driver ever to race for the Scuderia in the process.

While most are keen to see how he'll fair against teammate Sebastian Vettel, there is no doubting that Leclerc will need some settling in time at the front of the Formula 1 grid and despite talk of a title challenge by some, he has less lofty ambitions for now.

"It is clear that racing for Ferrari I would like to win a couple of Grands Prix such as Monaco, my home race, and Monza. I cannot imagine what it will be like to race in Italy as a Ferrari driver!” he said at an awards event in Italy this week.

Asked if he was feeling any additional pressure, the 21-year-old continued: “Pressure? No, I do not feel it. Rather I feel the support and I must say that I am happy. My goal is obviously to do my best and respect the team’s expectations.

“I will have at my side a driver like Sebastian Vettel who will be an important help for me to grow and learn.

“He is a wonderful person, as well as a great driver, and I got to know him when I worked at the Maranello simulator and he thanked me for the work I did."

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Leclerc has already enjoyed his first taste of life as a Ferrari race driver after wearing the red overalls at the post-season Pirelli tyre test in Abu Dhabi.

“How did I find it? Unbelievable. The car is fabulous to drive. It was a great honour as well as a great emotion,” Charles reflected.

“Obviously we are talking about a test, it does not make much sense to talk about performance in absolute terms, but the feeling was immediately exceptional.”

Max Verstappen is establishing himself as a future Formula 1 champion but still lacks one key asset compared to Lewis Hamilton.

That is the claim of Aldo Costa, the outgoing engineering director at Mercedes, who reflected on another successful year for the German manufacturer winning both titles.

The Dutchman was arguably the second best driver to Hamilton for much of 2018, finishing behind the eventual world champion in the points collected over the second half of the season after struggling early on.

That, however, just goes to what was Costa's main point to La Gazzetta dello Sport.

"He's a talent, he's fast but he still has to grow consistency, which has been the winning weapon of Hamilton," he said, "He himself said he has experienced his best season in F1.

"But we have been able to bring in the second part of the season, race after race, effective developments," Costa continued turning to Mercedes. 

"Certainly it was not a perfect year. We struggled to understand the tyres and in this case, Red Bull was better than us. Even the reliability was good but not exceptional."

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Looking ahead, Costa also admits to a little nervousness over the new aerodynamic regulations coming in 2019 and the impact they could have.

"Ferrari will obviously be there to fight with us and then I expect Red Bull, considering that they speak so well of the new Honda engine," he said of the likely pecking order. "But then there is Renault, Sauber, Haas. 

"The new rules could change a bit the balance, it could favour some and harm others. 

"We will do our best to conquer another title: we have drawn level with Ferrari in terms of consecutive Drivers' titles but now we have to reach them in the Constructors'."

Monza could undergo a significant transformation to celebrate the circuit's 100th birthday in 2022 and to save the future of the Italian Grand Prix.

The iconic venue, which has only failed to host Formula 1 once since 1950, has been struggling financially in recent years leading to questions over the future of the race.

Despite that, La Gazzetta dello Sport is quoting the president of the Automobile Club D'Italia, Angelo Sticchi Damiani, as claiming 100m Euros will be spent upgrading the Autodromo.

"The money will be found in some way," he said.

Plans had previously been put forward to alter the Monza layout several years ago before being dropped but now new ideas are being put forward which would actually restore some previous changes.

The second Lesmo bend could be widened back to how it was pre the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994 and there's also hopes to take out one of the first two chicanes.

La Gazzetta's report claims the Roggia chicane would be the preferred choice but that would seemingly contradict previous evaluations that such a change couldn't be done because of the lack of run-off at the first Lesmo bend which also can't be extended.

The track itself will also be widened to meet the FIA minimum requirement of 12m with Monza currently given an exemption to that rule because of its historical status.

"This is a work that we can already do in 2019," Damiani claimed. "We want to recover the ring in order to expand our offer. The road course and the high-speed oval are a 10 km track combined, how many others can boast something similar?"

All of this is dependent on a new F1 deal with Liberty Media with a "long-term contract" the goal of the ACI president but based on negotiations with the various local governments, Damiani concedes it is a "very complicated" situation with the parties still "very far apart".

Formula 1 motorsport chief Ross Brawn is aiming to introduce methods that would stop top teams getting a development advantage over the rest with the new 2021 cars.

The introduction of the current aerodynamic regulations in 2017 largely led to the two-tier grid which exists as the top three teams with their much larger resources have gotten further down the development path with the midfield now trying to catch up.

Now, with all-new cars set to be introduced as part of the overhaul in just over two years time, Brawn believes co-operation between the teams will keep the competitive order much closer.

"The FIA and ourselves [Liberty Media] have issued a framework of what the car could be like with tasks for each team to look at aspects of it," he explained to Formula1.com.

"It's not enough for teams to go off and start designing a car, we're purposefully trying to hold back on that. We don't want teams with a lot of resources to gain a march on those who don't.

"But it's a difficult balance because there is a perfectly valid argument that the later you leave the issuing of the information, the more it suits the teams with a lot of resources," he added.

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Earlier this year, a first glimpse into the various concepts being discussed for 2021 were revealed and talks are continuing on shaping those regulations with the goal of allowing the next generation F1 cars to be much more driver-orientated.

Asked when he expects the final design rules to be agreed, Brawn replied: "The teams will have about a year or so to work on the designs of these cars, I think that's the right sort of timescale.

"Once they've designed their 2020 cars, they need to be able to focus on 2021."

Sebastian Vettel has described the greater collective ethos at Ferrari as the biggest change during his four seasons with the Scuderia.

The German was drafted in as the new figurehead at Maranello after a tough 2014 with Red Bull and Fernando Alonso left the Italian team for McLaren.

His impact was pretty immediate as he won just his second race in red in Malaysia and has since gone on to claim 13 victories, finishing second to Lewis Hamilton in the Drivers' Championship the past two years.

"The team has developed a lot during this time," he told Auto Motor und Sport when asked about his time with Ferrari.

"Today's team is much stronger and more focused than four years ago, in the beginning, everything was very fragmented, now it is a unit."

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While Vettel does believe the improvement in results proves Ferrari is heading in the right direction, he admits the failure to win a championship so far means there is still work to do.

"In recent years we have shown that this team has potential," he stated. "We already had a very good car in 2017 and this year we achieved our goals we had set ourselves.

"Looking back, I'm sure you would have liked things to go a bit faster, but the trend is positive, even though we haven't yet got where we want to go."

Fernando Alonso believes he is a "more complete driver" now than at any point in his career because of his non-Formula 1 exploits.

After the Indianapolis 500 in 2017, the Spaniard focused on sportscars this year with a Daytona 24 Hours run before joining Toyota for the World Endurance Championship 'super-season' in addition to his seat at McLaren.

While some were concerned the extra events would lead to burnout, instead, the double F1 champion believes that despite the very different characteristics of the cars he drove, it all worked together.

"It's difficult to know exactly your speed in the car. You only can follow the numbers, and this year it has been my best year by far in terms of qualifying battles," Alonso said after beating Stoffel Vandoorne 21-0.

"So, I feel I'm competitive and I'm fast. Probably, testing day in IndyCar and the WEC programme this year, I feel better driver, or a more complete driver.

"I understand more the behaviour of the cars, other driving techniques, other ways of saving energy, saving the tyres.

"So, you have more information from the outside and other engineers, other points of view that maybe makes you better, or [provides] wider views of motorsport.

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"Probably when you jump in the Formula 1 car you have an extra opinion even if it's not totally useful in a Formula 1 car," he added.

"The overall concepts of different philosophies, I think it helps you as a driver."

Of course, Alonso won't have to worry about F1 in 2019 after calling time on his career after 17 seasons, but he will still have plenty to aim for with the second year of WEC and an attempt to complete the Triple Crown with McLaren at the Indianapolis 500 in May. 

Valtteri Bottas has once again brushed off rumours that 2019 could be his last year with Mercedes.

The Finn is under pressure to produce results next season after a tough year saw him fail to win a race through a combination of bad luck and playing a support role to teammate Lewis Hamilton.

Now, there is also a new threat looming from Esteban Ocon who lost his seat on the grid but is expected to return to Formula 1 in 2020, possibly in Silver.

"People are always talking and, for sure, every driver wants to move on with their own career, they want to grab the opportunities," Bottas accepted.

"But it's not my job to worry about that, it's only going to hurt me.

"I have a very good relationship with every team member here, including [motorsport boss] Toto [Wolff], and we can always speak openly about anything, so there's nothing being hidden."

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Currently, Bottas has a one-plus-one contract with Mercedes meaning he is secure for 2019 but it will be up to the team to decide if they take the option for the following year.

The 29-year-old is confident his fate remains in his hands, however, should his results improve.

"If I meet my targets and the targets the team has for me next year, that's good. If I don't and if the team feels I'm not performing well enough, then it's fair enough. It's how the sport goes, so I'm not worried," Valtteri claimed.

"I need to have a look at everything from this season because in every race weekend there are things you can do better.

"I cannot say it was just one thing in general, but we'll have a better look at everything and talk with the team about it.

"Then I'll need to decide what will be the main points [to improve] because there are many things and we're limited with time and with what you can process at once. That's the plan for the winter," he concluded.