Sebastian Vettel says Ferrari has been taking a different approach to the car this weekend and will "try something daring" for the race.
Despite a number of upgrades, including an engine update brought a month ahead of schedule to the Spanish Grand Prix, the Scuderia is still well behind the pace set by Mercedes.
However, Vettel claims the team has been experimenting with the SF90 and hope it can offer a path forward to extracting more performance.
"We tried a lot of stuff yesterday and again today, different directions and we ended up getting the best out of the car today which wasn't enough," he explained.
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"We are certainly not satisfied but I am very happy with the approach, with the chance that we took in terms of trying something daring, something that ultimately it will pay off.
"Maybe not today [in qualifying] at least, but hopefully it will help us in terms of pace for tomorrow and hopefully it sets us off in the right direction for the next couple of weeks."
The gap between Vettel and Valtteri Bottas on pole was over 0.8s with Ferrari, admittedly influenced by the use of harder tyre compounds, didn't even improve their time set in pre-season testing back in March.
"We need to dig deep," he continued. "Now is not the first time we are losing out and not the second time nor the third time.
"It is a consistent trend that we seem to lose, in some places, independent of conditions, sunshine, clouds, tyres and compounds and so on.
"There is a bit more for us to understand but if we had the solution surely it would be on the car already."
