Charles Leclerc described his experience at the Hungarian Grand Prix as "extremely frustrating" after failing to finish on the podium.
Leclerc was subject to a considerable loss of pace in the latter part of the race, which he believes cost him his best chance to win this season.
Starting from pole position, Leclerc led most of the race and had a strong start, successfully keeping McLaren drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris behind him during the early stages.
However, after Norris employed a different pit strategy to take the lead, opting to only make one stop, Leclerc began to struggle with his car’s performance.
Leclerc revealed that the root cause of his decline was an issue with the chassis of his Ferrari, which started to manifest strongly around lap 40 and progressively worsened, making the car "undriveable" by the end of the race.
Leclerc said: "From around lap 40, we had a problem with the chassis, so now I've had more details about it.
"In the car, obviously, I had no idea what was going on. I mean, I had an idea, but it was a wrong idea because I thought it was something that was in our control."
This issue led to him losing nearly 37 seconds to Piastri over the final 30 laps, slipping down the order and finishing fourth.
Leclerc continued: "When we have one opportunity in a year to win a race, we need to take it, and today we didn't. Now we will analyse what are the reasons why we had this problem.
"I don't think it's anything that we had in our control, but we'll check."
The driver has now converted just one of his last 16 pole positions into a win, with that solitary win coming at the Monaco Grand Prix in 2024.
