Charles Leclerc says Ferrari's SF-23 displayed in Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix its usual lack of consistency despite the Scuderia fielding a practically new car in Barcelona.
Leclerc suffered a brutal exit from qualifying on Saturday when the Monegasque was unable to get his car up to speed in Q1 due to an obscure handling quirk that undermined his performance.
Ferrari, which introduced in Spain a new sidepod and floor design on its SF-23, opted to change the car's gearbox and rear-end on Sunday morning which equated to a pitlane start for Leclerc.
Relying on a hard-to-medium-to hard tyre strategy, the Scuderia charger progressively moved up the order but remained stranded in twelfth position in the final 15 laps of the race.
While Leclerc observed a positive change of handling behaviour compared to qualifying, he was once again mystified by his car's lack of performance consistency throughout the race.
"I don't understand what we are doing wrong, but we are doing something wrong," commented a frustrated Leclerc after the race.
"In terms of balance the car was alright, but the performance was not at all consistent.
"We ran the hards twice, but with the first set I struggled a lot, while with the second one it was reasonably good and I was catching Pierre [Gasly] towards the end.
"We really must analyse all the data, because while the upgrades seem to work as expected, we are always slightly caught out by what is happening with the tyres and we struggle to get them in the right window which is a big problem.
"We ran the same tyre twice in the same race and we went from having a very bad car to quite a good one towards the end of the race.
"Now we will go back to the factory and find out what went wrong yesterday in qualifying because that’s what put us in a tricky situation today. There’s a lot of work to do."
©Ferrari
Leclerc noted that his car's limitations on Sunday were the opposite of those he experienced the day before in qualifying.
"The limitations were the opposite," he said. "Yesterday, I had a rear that was super loose and super strange, and we will analyse this at the factory. Today, it was the front.
"It’s such a tiny window and we know that this is one of our weaknesses and we are struggling in those conditions and we need to be on top of those things."
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