Charles Leclerc has insisted Ferrari is maximising the pace of its 2025 Formula 1 car, which makes it all the more frustrating when his best Miami qualifying effort only left him eighth on the grid.
Leclerc, who missed Saturday's sprint race after aquaplaning into the wall on his way to the grid, and team-mate Lewis Hamilton both struggled for performance in a dry qualifying session for Sunday's main grand prix.
But Leclerc could only manage eighth, 0.550s off Max Verstappen's pole and behind both Williams cars, while Hamilton was narrowly dumped out in Q2 and will line up 12th.
The most worrying aspect for Leclerc is that he actually felt his final qualifying effort was rather good, demonstrating that Ferrari is just lacking the raw performance to compete with McLaren, Red Bull or Mercedes.
"It is frustrating," he admitted. "To be honest, even more frustrating is that this weekend I felt like we are maximising the potential of the car.
"It's just that the potential of the car is just not there. Today in qualifying I felt very satisfied with my lap, but it's only bringing us whatever it is, P8 or something...
"We are just not fast. Whatever we do with the car – we can run it in different ways, but we just don't have the downforce that the others have at the moment."
Miami highlights Ferrari's low-speed weakness
While Leclerc was able to drive to the podium at the high-speed Jeddah street circuit two weeks ago, he says Ferrari is being exposed even more at the 5.41km Miami International Autodrome, which is dominated by slower corners.
"I think a track like this also highlights our weaknesses," he pointed out. "There are a lot of low-speed corners, and both Williams [cars] are in front of us – and I consider my lap a good one. So, I think it's pretty easy to understand where we are lacking."
When asked about his crash before the start of the wet-to-dry sprint race, Leclerc said it was a mistake to complete the laps to the grid on intermediates while there was a lot of standing water on the track.
"In the first place the mistake was to be out on inter tyres with those track conditions," he said. "We need to understand what we've done wrong as a team, but obviously I think this was the main mistake that then cost us a lot.
"Obviously, that made the whole day a lot more difficult for the mechanics and for me as well, not doing as many laps as others, but I don't feel like I've paid the price of it today. We were just not fast enough."
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