The Ferrari driver narrowly edged out Red Bull rivals Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez after a difficult session for many drivers, in which several top names made mistakes or were harmed by yellow flags caused by others.
The first three suffered off track during free practice, even the current world champion had a spin at low speed, although without major consequences.
Asked if he was expecting a tough fight for pole position against Red Bull, Leclerc said: “I think it will be. We’ve had a good Friday because overall I think we’ve improved quite a bit from the first to the second session of free, but there is still another step we have to take from today to tomorrow.
“I also think that in FP2 no one has really done a lap, and neither have we,” said the Monegasque. “Max [Verstappen] and Carlos [Sainz] haven’t improved on the soft tyre, so yeah, there are still a lot of question marks.
“I think the positive thing about today is that the tire degradation was good, and the race pace was very strong, and I think that’s good,” explained the second-placed driver’s world champion overall.
Leclerc’s laps on high fuel towards the end of the session were compromised when he noticed a loss of power , and urgently radioed his team for an explanation, but was informed by his engineer that he could return to ‘race mode’ without problems.
“It wasn’t really a problem with the power unit,” said the Monegasque driver. “It’s that I forgot that I had changed something, which obviously made me lose power, but nothing bad.”
Charles Leclerc arrives at this weekend’s event in Azerbaijan with the need to get a good result, since after a solid start with two victories in the first three races of the year, in the following four events he only climbed on the podium once , when he was second in Miami.
