I think they have two core issues and none is actually their strategy people directly:
1. It seems they don't have simulation tools as advanced as the other teams. I don't think you can buy these and you need to develop them in-house and integrate them with your simulator and modelling tools. From the speed at which decisions are taken in changing conditions (safety car, VSC, rain etc) it seems to me that RB and Mercedes have a reaction time measured in seconds, whilst Ferrari looks like there's an actual person modeling the new scenario and reacting. This would also make sense given that Italy is not particularly renowned for its software or mathematics strength, whilst UK has top universities in both of those fields as well as really strong software industry.
2. Their desire to protect Sainz. This makes 0 sense. If the first one I can understand as being very tricky to solve, not giving Leclerc all the advantages of being the #1 driver is absolutely stupid. Whenever these are close on track, there should be an instruction to swap the cars over. It's as simple as that in the end and every top team does it. The only moment when you can afford not to do it is when you have such a big performance advantage over the other teams that you're guaranteed to win every race you start.