Leclerc heads second Baku practice despite 'bent' Ferrari complaints

Charles Leclerc has ended the second practice session ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on top of the timesheet.

The Monegasque driver set his best lap time with just under 15 minutes remaining in the session.

It was not a smooth outing for the most recent race winner as he pitted in the opening minutes complaining of “bent” steering following his crash during FP1 earlier today.

He also took to the escape road when emerging from the pits, but managed to improve his best time to take over at the head of the FP2 classification.

Leclerc ended the day must 0.006s ahead of Sergio Perez while seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton was just half a tenth down in third.

Carlos Sainz was fourth for Ferrari ahead of Oscar Piastri, while reigning world champion Max Verstappen was sixth on the road, over half a second down on his team-mate.

Sainz was also involved in an incident late on with Perez, with the latter complaining of being impeded through the high-speed approach to the Turn 16 braking zone.

Lance Stroll enjoyed a strong session at the scene of his maiden F1 podium result by ending the day in seventh.

Haas will be motivated by its early pace as Nico Hulkenberg and Oliver Bearman classified in eighth and 10th respectively.

George Russell only set his qualifying simulation run late on in the day after Mercedes carried out a power unit change, which lifted him to ninth.

He was then called into the garage in the final minutes of the session after being informed of an issue with his car.

Lando Norris failed to set a representative qualifying time as his lap was impeded by Pierre Gasly in the high-speed kinks in the final sector - Gasly blamed a battery issue for slowing up his rival.

Franco Colapinto was lucky to avoid another session-ending crash as he clipped the wall at Turn 8.