'Solid' start for Leclerc, 'bottoming and bouncing' for Sainz

Charles Leclerc was able to get back on top of the timesheets on Friday in Baku after the first two practice sessions for this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix, but it wasn't entirely plain sailing for the Ferrari driver.

Leclerc and his team mate Carlos Sainz looked to be struggling to match the pace of Red Bull pair Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen in the first one hour session, with Leclerc ending up second and trailing Perez by 0.127s.

But Ferrari found more pace from the F1-75 in the later session, with Leclerc ending up a quarter of a second quicker than his rivals at the end of the day, although his final minutes ended in frustration.

• Read also: Leclerc ahead of Perez and Verstappen in Baku FP2

Leclerc looked to be setting up some slipstreaming trials with Sainz when his car seemed to suffer some intermittent power unit issues, but the Ferrari pit wall reassured him that there was nothing to worry about.

"Actually it was not a power unit problem," he admitted afterwards. "It's just me that forgot that I had changed something which obviously made me lose power! But nothing bad.

"We had a solid first day," he said after the end of the session, determined to look on the bright side of how things had gone on Friday. "The progression we made from FP1 to FP2 was good and we worked well as a team.

"There is still quite a bit of room for improvement," he continued. "Our race pace looked quite strong and I felt good in the car. In terms of tyres, I felt comfortable on the long run and didn't have any graining, which is another positive.

"[But] the lap times are not representative, because no one put a proper lap together in the second session," he cautioned. "Max and Carlos didn't actually improve on the soft, so there are still quite a lot of question marks.

"I think the positive to take away from today is that he tyre degradation was good, and the race pace was very strong."

Proving the point, Sainz - having been fourth in FP1 - finished the day in fifth place behind Alpine's Fernando Alonso after missing out on the opportunity to set a flying lap time on soft tyres because of various on-track incidents.

"It’s been an interesting Friday, as always here in Baku," he said. "There were quite a few challenges during FP1 and I was struggling a bit too much with the bottoming and the bouncing, which made the session quite uncomfortable.

"We worked in the right direction for FP2, improving competitiveness and feeling. Overall it was a smooth second session despite not being able to close an entire flying lap on the softs due to yellow flags

Sainz added that he was looking forward to making another step forward tomorrow, and that he was hoping for a clean qualifying to show his true single lap pace.

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