Carlos Sainz admitted he "just couldn't push" his Ferrari due to continued tyre wear woes at the Spanish Grand Prix.
Starting second, the Madrid native had hopes of a podium at his home race and gave Max Verstappen his only real challenge en route victory at the start.
But that was as good as things got for Carlos, who was overhauled by both Mercedes' and just missed out in fourth.
LAP 35/66
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 4, 2023
Super pass by Russell on Sainz down the inside at Turn 1! He's up to P3
No sweat 😉#SpanishGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/HCQ0laZumZ
Speaking afterwards, Sainz admitted there was nothing he could do to stop Lewis Hamilton or George Russell due to Ferrari's limitations.
"Honestly, I just spent the whole race managing tyres because we know we are very hard on them and I just couldn't push," he said.
"We know it's a weakness of our car and coming to a high-degradation circuit and in a two-stop race, we were just managing the whole way trying to make it to the target laps of the stints and still falling short in a few of them.
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"The weaknesses of our car are coming alive on a circuit like this with the high-speed corners and how hard we are on tyres. But it also shows that yesterday we must have done a pretty good lap [in qualifying].
"I think today was again, a bit back to where the car is at the moment in race pace, and yeah, probably this sort of track is not great for us."
While Mercedes' performance rebounded thanks mostly to a raft of upgrades introduced in Monaco, Sainz explained how Ferrari's tyre problems disguised the true potential of their own new package.
"Difficult to tell," he said on if the upgrades had worked.
"I know the factory did a tremendous effort to bring them. Probably we brought them to our weakest track of this season because of the characteristics of the track.
"So probably we haven't seen the best of them yet.
"I still believe with the bouncing and the high-speed weakness we have we were never going to be very competitive around here.
"So, it's too early to tell but I think they did a tremendous effort to bring it, so hats off to all the factory, let's keep pushing and let's keep improving."
