Sainz: Ferrari 'battling' with inconsistent car

Carlos Sainz says Ferrari are "battling" with an inconsistent car after their lacklustre performance at the Miami Grand Prix.

Both George Russell and Fernando Alonso finished ahead of Sainz in the race, which featured more tyre degradation problems for the team as they search for answers on their pace.

The Ferrari driver says the race will help them understand why their car is good in certain conditions compared to others, particularly after he experienced poor tyre degradation on the Hard tyre while everyone else could push without it affecting their overall pace.

"I think we are in the middle of a learning process," Sainz told Sky Sports F1.

"This weekend will help us a lot to understand why we can fight for pole, do a very good stint on Medium [tyre] and push Fernando on the Medium, then suddenly put the Hard [tyre] on for three or four laps, pushing the tyre to see how to try and undercut.

"Then this means that the next stint you're gonna finish 20 seconds behind a car that is actually quicker, and [it turns out] we were actually quicker on the Medium."

Ferrari need to solve aero 'peaky' problems

Ferrari's Jock Clear has already detailed the 'aero peakiness' problem that the SF-23 has, which is what will be addressed in the latest update package to the car.

Part of that was the new floor introduced over the Miami weekend, but Sainz still believes that the SF-23 is an inconsistent car to drive.

"We clearly need to understand why and at the moment we're battling and it's very difficult to understand these things," Sainz explained.

"It's a very inconsistent car, it's very peaky. You're driving properly on the limit, on a knife edge, like we've seen all weekend and this means that in the race, we are paying the price."