Ferrari's Charles Leclerc crashed and then went fastest in practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Friday while champions Red Bull found some speed after a disappointing run of results.

Leclerc, winner of the previous round in Italy and on pole for the past three years in Baku, bounced back with a late lap of one minute 43.484 seconds to lead second practice after missing half of the first session when he hit the wall.

Red Bull's Sergio Perez, twice winner in Baku and the driver with the best record around the city circuit, was a mere 0.006 slower.

"The pace was there today, but between the incident in FP1 (first practice) and a problem we had in FP2 with the steering, we didn’t complete too many laps," said Leclerc.

"It will be important for us to have a smooth FP3 (final practice) and get ready to extract the most out of qualifying tomorrow."

Perez's team mate and Formula One leader Max Verstappen had been fastest in the three-times halted first practice session with a lap of 1:45.546, but dropped to sixth in the later one when he had understeer and visor problems.

"We learnt quite a bit and now it's just about tidying up the things that we tried, but I think so far we have been more competitive this weekend so that’s positive," said Verstappen, who has a 62 point lead over McLaren's Lando Norris.

Norris was fourth fastest in practice one and 17th in the second after looking quick but was then blocked by Alpine's Pierre Gasly.

"We’re quite a long way off," the Briton told F1 TV. "I’m having to push way too much to try and get a lap time out of it. I think we have quite a lot to find, honestly.

"Compared to Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, they’re all very similar and then there’s a good three, four tenths (of a second) gap back to us. So a lot of work for us to do."