Saudi Arabian Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton describes his race as ‘horrible’

Leclerc, by contrast, drove an outstanding race with a long first stint on the medium tyres to catch and pass Mercedes’ George Russell for the final podium place.

He said: “I feel like we’ve maximised absolutely everything we could have this weekend. There wasn’t anything more in the car.

“We need to focus on qualifying because it’s been a very long time I haven’t been as happy with the car balance.

“I feel very at ease with the car in a way that I know I can extract the maximum out of the car more often than not, but unfortunately, the car potential is just not good enough to fight for better in qualifying.”

Ferrari just missed out on winning the constructors’ championship last year and started this season hoping to compete for the title.

But McLaren and Red Bull have progressed more than the Italian team over the winter.

Leclerc said: “We are close on the race pace. Free air dictates a little bit who is going to win the race. That’s always been the case. Maybe this year a little bit more than other years. And obviously when that is the case, qualifying is more important.

“But unfortunately, for two years, we are just struggling in qualifying to put everything together.

“The problem is it’s not always the same issue. This time it was four tenths in the first three corners. For the rest of the lap, we were fast. And now today in the race, actually, the first sector was probably the best sector we had.

“So we’ve got to look at that. Obviously, there are answers in what we are doing, and we are doing something wrong, clearly. We’ve got to find it.

“We cannot lose too many races before finding it because we’re already 50 points down in the drivers’ championship.

“We’re not looking at it too much, but 50 points is a big number. I don’t want to be losing more points than that in the next few races.”