Sebastian Vettel hopes Ferrari’s “daring” set-up direction will bring the team back into cont☂ention against chief Formula 1 rival Mercedes during the S🅷panish Grand Prix.

The four-time world champion ended up eight-tenths adrift of polesitter Valtteri Bottas in qual𓆉ifying as Mercedes convincingly locked-out the front-row of the Barcelona grid, with Vettel left 🎶to settle with a distant third.

But the German believes ꦕFerrari’s approach🍨 to its race-day set-up could hand the Italian squad an advantage.

“We tried a lot of stuff - 𓂃💧different directions - and we ended up getting the best out of the car [in qualifying], which wasn’t enough.

“We are certainly not satisfied but I am very happy with the approach and with the chance that we took in terms of trying something daring and I think ultimately it will 🦹pay off.

“Maybe not yet, not [in qualifying] at least, but hopefully it helps u🌌s in terms of pace and hopefully sets us off in the right di🤡rection for the next couple of weeks.”

Vettel admits he was surprised by the extent of Mercedes’ advantage in qualifying and says Ferrari h𒉰as work to do to get on top on its apparent weakness in slow speed corners.

“Coming here we did not expect [the gap to Mercedes]ꦕ but we ൲seemed to lose a big amount of time in the final sector,” Vettel explained.

“It’s quite clear that we appear to be faster down the straights so 🍬we are probably carrying a little bit less wing than them. But then obviously in the last sector there are no straights, so struggling to bring it together.

“It is not a long sector but there are some corners at mostly lower speed and that is where we appear to be losing speed. The🥂re is definitely some homework, we know this track very well, everybody does, but with the conditions we were just not able to match them.

“I think ꧂overall the car is good, we have performance, but we need to put it together and dig deep,” hဣe added.

“Now is not the first time we are losing out, not the second or the third time, 𒉰so it is a consistent trend that we seem to lose in some places independent of conditi༒ons, sunshine, clouds, tyres and compounds and so on.

“There is a biꦛt more for us to understand, but if we had the so♉lution surely it would be on the car already.”