Ferrari's test driver and ambassador, Marc Gene, has conceded that the team is currently not poised to clinch victories in Formula 1 races.
Although Charles Leclerc secured a win as recently as Monaco starting from the pole position, the recent updates to the car have failed to perform as expected in the races that followed in Canada, Barcelona, and now Austria.
Leclerc was unable to finish his final attempt during sprint qualifying on Friday, which results in him starting from the tenth position for the brief Saturday race.
"They were all going so slowly that the anti-stall came on," recounted Gene, once an F1 racer himself, while speaking to DAZN at the Red Bull Ring.
Carlos Sainz, Leclerc's teammate, managed to qualify in fifth place, trailing Max Verstappen's pole position time by half a second.
"The potential is there," Gene affirmed, "but we have to optimise the package and make it work really well. We see improvements, but we have not managed to make them constant in all the laps and in all the types of corners.
"And as these races are all back-to-back, we don't have time to work on this package, which has potential that we haven't seen on the track yet," the Spaniard added.
When questioned about the possibility of a surprise victory, the 50-year-old Gene was clear: "These are moments right now to get the maximum points we can, because fighting for victories as happened in Monaco is something that is not within reach for our car at the moment."
