Charles Leclerc is so far the only non-Red Bull driver to snare a pole position this season, with the Monegasque topping both Friday and Saturday sprint shootouts in Azerbaijan.
He was also only 0.292s adrift of pole in the Bahrain opener before he retired with a power unit failure and then 0.155s short in Saudi Arabia qualifying prior to serving a grid penalty.
But Ferrari has only scored one podium this term, courtesy of Leclerc in Baku and its highest-place driver has finished on average 30.85s behind the race winner across the first five rounds.
Ferrari driver coach Jock Clear says this spread can be explained by reigning constructors’ champion Red Bull leaving the door open in qualifying as a trade-off to maximise race pace.
Asked to explain the comparative Ferrari drop off over a longer stint, Clear said: “We have a good understanding of where the issues lie. It's quantifying it.
“So, in some ways, we would say, ‘OK, we're looking at what's going on in the race compared to what's going on qualifying’. We can see some differences.
“Maybe what we can't quite align is how those differences turn out. That’s the process that we're going through at the moment, [it] is to identify what we can do, or what we can shift around in terms of our focus, to maybe bring that race pace back into line.”
Source: Autosport