Charles Leclerc echoed what his Ferrari team boss Frederic Vasseur said, admitting the SF-23 at his disposal - while rapid in qualifying - cannot convert poles to wins.
That has been evident this season, as despite bagging four pole positions so far in the 2023 Formula 1 season, Leclerc has not been able to convert any of them to wins, while teammate Carlos Sainz converted one of is two poles into a win in Singapore, on a weekend where Red Bull and Max Verstappen struggled.
In the final race of the triple header in Brazil this weekend, Leclerc has a chance to secure a hat-trick of poles following a consecutive double in Austin and Mexico, but the Ferrari ace insisted wins are what matters.
"It's always nice [To get pole], but at the same time, for me, it matters the most on Sunday and in races," he told the media in Sao Paulo on Thursday.
"And at this time we don't really have the car in order to make those pole positions a win, or at least a really good result on Sunday. So we really have to work on that. And that's where we are all focusing at the moment, to try and find performance coming the race. And we've still got quite a bit of work to do.
"So it will be amazing to be on pole. But I would rather have a win than a pole this weekend," the Monegasque maintained.
Degradation more track-related that tyre-related
With Pirelli bringing harder rubber to Brazil, Leclerc was quizzed whether that would reduce his SF-23's appetite for tyres, he responded: "I don't think this has a big influence on our performance.
"I think it's more down to the track characteristics," he pointed out. "But again, it's very difficult to predict this weekend, and especially on Sprint weekends, FP1 is super important. It's very easy to put a foot in the wrong direction, if that's a good expression, and then the whole weekend you cannot really recover if you do a mistake in FP1 with the set-up.
"So it's going to be super important to have a strong FP one. And hopefully that will be a positive weekend for us," Leclerc concluded.
Leclerc was disqualified from the results of the United States Grand Prix in Austin after the under-floor planks on his SF-23 were found to have been excessively worn out, the team missing the proper ride height on the car as they had only one practice session, since the Austin weekend was a Sprint.
Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton suffered the same fate losing second place in Austin.
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