Leclerc warns 'weakness' still persists with Ferrari car

Charles Leclerc has warned that a "weakness" with the SF-23 still persists after experiencing it during the Mexican Grand Prix.

Leclerc finished third in the race after starting on pole, with Lewis Hamilton overtaking him for second a few laps into the restart after the red flag.

Restarting on the Hard tyres Leclerc struggled to keep the charging Mercedes behind on the Mediums, mainly due to a trait that was previously identified by the team earlier in the season.

"I think it still confirms the weaknesses of our car, where it's a very peaky car," Leclerc told media, including RacingNews365.

"Whenever we get out of the optimal window of the car, we are losing too much time. That's exactly what happened on the Hard."

Ferrari did a lot of setup work to try and understand the main faults of the SF-23, which has been what has enabled them to exploit their potential in the last couple of races.

Carlos Sainz used it to his advantage to become the only non-Red Bull car so far to win a race in Singapore, while Leclerc credited their setup work for his recent podiums.

Leclerc: We'll try to understand what went wrong

Leclerc knew it would be a tough final stint on the Hard, especially as the red flag meant that they lost a lot of the temperature in the tyres.

"At first, I thought I could do quite a good job once we stopped. But then there was a red flag, the tyres cooled down, we went back out and the feeling was just not the same," he explained.

"It's a bit of a shame because before that it was really good, especially on the Medium.

"But we'll look into it on the Hard to try and understand what went wrong to improve that in the future.

"In the short term, there's no big fixes I think every time we are a bit out of the optimal window, we lose too much time."