According to team boss Mattia Binotto, Ferrari's problems at the French Grand Prix showed that a long-standing weakness with front tire wear has not gone away & they need to fix it for next season.
Sunday's race in Paul Ricard was the first time a Ferrari had failed to score this year, with Spaniard Carlos Sainz 11th & Monegasque Charles Leclerc 16th.
He had qualified in the last two races in Monaco & Azerbaijan with Leclerc on pole in fifth & seventh place respectively, but Ferrari finished the weekend third to fourth in the constructors' championship.
"We haven't been able to make the tires work as we should have & I think our performance was really tied to the tyres, the way we made them work," Binotto told reporters.
Le Castellet did not host a race last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Binotto said putting too much energy into the tires in hot conditions & high-speed corners had been a problem in the past.
"We should have addressed this & it is not the case yet," Binotto said. "This is important as a lesson for us looking to the future."
However, it would take longer than the development of the current car to fix the problem, he added.
"To solve this, I think we need some hardware changes, for example the rims, which is not possible for the regulations," said the Italian.
"I think it's more important for us to try to understand & definitely address this for next year. In the meantime I think this issue will happen again in some races but not all on the track."
Sainz, who joined the team this year from McLaren, said the team struggled more in races than in qualifying but there were some where race pace was not an issue.
"It's really clear that we have a very narrow window of work to do on our front tires & we struggle a lot more with grain & front wear than our competitors," the Spaniard said.
"Now we're trying to understand why we have such a narrow window & why we struggle more with this front tire wear."
France was the first of the race's triple-headers on consecutive weekends, with Austria's Red Bull Ring hosting the next 2.