Following another disappointing race, Charles Leclerc admits that he simply doesn't understand his car.

While the last couple of races have (thankfully) witnessed a lack of the yo-yoing overtakes that dominated the start of the season, there has been a certain amount of yo-yoing in terms of performance, especially as upgrades are introduced.

Following Lewis Hamilton's win in Spain, the introduction of further upgrades this weekend, including a new engine, had rivals fearing the worst, but instead the Maranello outfit appeared to take a step backwards.

For Leclerc it was another disappointing outing, as he lost further ground not only to the championship leading Mercedes pair but also his own teammate.

A disappointing Friday was followed by an altogether better qualifying in which the Monegasque claimed second on the grid and his teammate third. However, come the race, despite a strong start he was never really a contender and had slipped down to eighth by the end.

"It was an incredibly difficult race," he told reporters. "Very, very low grip overall.

"I struggled to have the car, and the tyres especially, in the right window," he continued, "especially the rears, just missing a lot of rear grip.

"There's still a lot of work to be done," he admitted. "I think I've been working very hard in the past weeks because there was always one reason or another that made me struggle on the Sunday or on the Saturday.

"But at the moment, there's always a reason why there's a struggle, and that probably means that I don't really have a clear picture of what I want from this car, and I've got to find that."

His teammate, who finished fifth, admitted that, in the wake of Barcelona, this weekend was a "reality check".

Asked if he felt the car's performance was track specific, the seven-time world champion replied: "I think it's more of a reality check.

"We don't know why we were so competitive on Sunday in Barcelona," he continued. "That's a very strong track for me, I chose a strategy that from experience I knew would work, with the deg that we had it was like 2021.

"But then today I think we were hit more with reality, which is we do still have a good car but we are down compared to Mercedes just on pace, they just are quicker and we have to keep developing.

"It doesn't mean we can't close that gap," he insisted, "[but that one win doesn't mean we are going to be beating them all the time. It's the opposite, we've got a lot of work to do to try. We still have to just continue to add performance to the car, particularly power is where we're going to keep working."

Happy with the car in qualifying, Leclerc was baffled by its behavioural change just 24 hours later.

"It's always a bit of a bet, but it's a feeling," he said. "I thought that was the right direction. Yesterday, I was quite happy with the car, but it wasn't the right direction today."

Asked if there was a specific cause, such as understeer or oversteer, he said: "There's a lot down to that. I think also car characteristics swing a lot the performance this year as well, because this weekend we've been a lot more on the back foot. I mean, especially in the race, because in qualifying, we weren't too bad.

"But we've been less competitive as a whole. So yeah, a bit of everything, but probably car balance."