Toto Wolff believes "something must have gone wrong" for Ferrari after it had to settle for a third row lockout ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix.
Sebastian Vettel finished within 1.5s of Nico Rosberg in FP3 on Saturday morning, suggesting the team would be in the mix for qualifying itself. Not only did the challenge for pole not materialise, Ferrari also found itself off the pace of Red Bull, which managed to put both cars on the second row behind Mercedes.
Wolff was surprised not to see the two red cars closer to the front.
Speaking about Ferrari's performance, he said: "Quite a surprise actually, because Ferrari has been very strong in a couple of sessions over the weekend and something must have gone wrong for them in qualifying because suddenly the pace was gone and on the contrary Red Bull was somehow rising again with [Daniel] Ricciardo and [Max] Verstappen, which was entertaining for us to watch."
Mercedes' race run pace looks strong at the Circuit de Catalunya but Wolff believes much will depend on the getaway Lewis Hamilton and Rosberg have from the front row.
"First of all it will be very important to get off the line well. As you know at this track it is extremely difficult to overtake so rather than to play it out over strategy we would like to have a clean getaway and Red Bull on the qualifying laps had quite some pace and their long runs looked good yesterday so let's see. I think pace-wise we should be looking ok but it all depends on the getaway at the start."
Wolff also reserved praise for Hamilton's pole lap, which saw him cross the line in a 1:22.000, a benchmark the team boss thinks could have been even lower.
"It was really interesting because he lost a day yesterday in terms of finding the right set up and then overnight Lewis and his guys and the engineers found the right solution. The car was in a much better place this morning and he compensated for the lost time yesterday and got the car right in the way that he wanted to have it in Q2. You could see he looked solid, we saw a Lewis Hamilton lap and I think that would have been in the high 1:21's -- the first lap that he locked up on."