Charles Leclerc admits he found the French Grand Prix to be one of the most difficult races he has ever faced during his Formula 1 career. After qualifying in seventh, the Monegasque struggled to find pace in the Grand Prix and continued to slip down the field. He eventually finished down in 16th place, whilst Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz also ended up outside of the points in 11th. Leclerc feels that the team suffered more with tyre degradation than others. "It's been one of the most difficult races of my time in Formula 1," Leclerc told Sky Sports F1. "I've been just struggling massively. I think both of the cars are struggling massively. "We had like five or six laps on the tyres where we were quite good and we were competitive and then, even though we were trying to take care of the tyres, they were degrading so much on my side. "We tried a second stop towards the end, we knew that we would be out of the points anyway so we just went for another stop. But then obviously it was quite tricky, because we were with blue flags and things like this. "It was just a very bad race for us so we need to understand." Whilst other teams were also surprised by the high levels of tyre degradation during the race, Leclerc thinks that the consequences seemed worse for Ferrari. "We knew that degradation was going to be a big thing today, not as much as this definitely, so we've been surprised too," the 23-year-old explained. "But it's not like we were not taking care of the tyres at the beginning, so we've been as surprised as the others, but the consequences were a lot bigger for us."
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