Charles Leclerc is at a loss to understand why his car felt "weird" and "undriveable" in qualifying, leaving him 19th on the grid.

For the youngster who started from pole here just twelve months ago, it was the first time he hasn't made it out of Q1 since Monaco 2019.

As opposed to the upgrade package introduced this weekend, the Monegasque driver believes the root of the problem is mechanical, leaving his crew facing a long night as they work on the car under parc ferme conditions.

"I don't have the answer for now," he admitted. "The only thing I can say is that the left-hand corners were undriveable. The right-hand corners, the feeling was very similar to this morning. There's just something off in the left-hand corners that we need to analyse and understand because it was very far off what I expected.

"I think mechanical because it wasn't linear," he replied, when asked the source of the issue. "Our upgrade package is the new one and it worked really well. So I don't think it is aero."

Told he had failed to make it out of Q1, the youngster had sighed and replied: "Unbelievable!"

"I had no grip at all in the left-hand corners from the rears," he subsequently told the media. "We'll check well the car and I'll be very surprised if everything was fine.

"I had so many moments, these were just very, very weird behaviours. I nearly lost it during the red flag (in Q1) and I was at 70kph and there was just no warning.

"The left-hand corners were really, really bad with the rear-right, and I first thought that it was the tyre. So we went for a new set of tyres, and on the new set of tyres, it was exactly the same feeling, right-hand corners were really good, left-hand corners completely off.

"We'll have to check the car. Even this morning in the tricky conditions I was feeling really good with the car so there's something off.

"I was not even that surprised when they told me I was out of Q1. I was very surprised by the feeling, which is why I said 'unbelievable'. But when they told me I was out of Q1, with the car I had, I was not that surprised.

"It's going to be an uphill weekend, to be honest," he said of the race ahead. "But on the other hand, it's a track where I think we'll see quite a few stops. Degradation is going to be a big thing so if we do a good job on that, we've got our chances."

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