'Going to be an exciting one' – Leclerc aiming to 'do something good' in Spanish GP Qualifying

Charles Leclerc believes that Qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend is "going to be an exciting one", having got his first taste of the Madring on Friday.

Ferrari proved to be Mercedes' closest challenger during the opening day of practice at Formula 1's newest venue, which provided plenty of challenges for teams and drivers.

Leclerc finished P3 and P2 in the two, one-hour sessions and was just one-tenth behind Free Practice 2 pacesetter Kimi Antonelli after a positive day behind the wheel.

"It has been a very interesting day. Obviously it is a completely new track for everyone. It is a very, very challenging track and I think for Qualifying, it is going to be an exciting one," said Leclerc.

"Lots of work ahead of us to try and improve the car for tomorrow but I think the day went quite well. I think we went through our programme, which is important.

"We did maximise the amount of laps we could do which was also one of the main targets for today, being on a new track. Looking forward to tomorrow to try and do something good in Qualifying."

Leclerc has generally been strong on street circuits during his F1 career, but admits that he doesn't have a target in mind during Saturday's crucial Qualifying session, with overtaking likely to be difficult in Madrid.

"It is more about trying to maximise what we have and we will see at the end of Qualifying where that leaves us," he said.

"I expect the Mercedes is quite strong but you never know so I’ll just focus on myself, trying to optimise everything we can on our car and hopefully we can do something really good tomorrow."

Team mate Lewis Hamilton also showed strong pace, finishing P4 and P3, but Ferrari team boss Fred Vassuer is wary of the team's prospects so early into the weekend.

In particular, that the track's condition will only improve and move the goalposts that teams have calibrated to on Friday.

"I think we are far away of the lap time of Quali, the most important is to improve the competitiveness of the car and for the driver to understand the track also," said Vasseur.

"I think there is a lot of topic about energy deployment and so, that means racing is open and everybody will improve a lot. We just have to be focused on ourselves.

"I think we are all in the same boat, that track evolution is huge from one session to the other one, but almost from one lap to the other one balance is changing a little bit."