Ferrari have an upgrade on their car this weekend, focused on a new floor, but Leclerc was downplaying expectations.
“It felt good but it is not the gain I have seen or heard about,” Leclerc said. “It is small gains but we could still see them on the car. It is a small step forward and we started the weekend on the right foot with a good balance and that is the outstanding thing with this Friday.
“It has been a very clean Friday for me, but the others seem to be gaining more than us from Friday to Saturday and seeing the little gap there is, it is not going to be so easy tomorrow.”
Leclerc picked up on Verstappen’s complaints about the track surface on Thursday by saying: “It was very poor. The first sector is particularly poor and very bumpy.”
McLaren’s Lando Norris was seventh fastest, although the world champion did not set a time on his qualifying simulation run on soft tyres after making a mistake at Turn 16.
Norris was the fastest on the long runs, at about 0.2secs on average faster than Verstappen, but cannot be compared as he was running the hard tyre.
McLaren have introduced the first of three consecutive planned upgrades this weekend, but he was not happy with his performance.
“Difficult,” Norris said. “The pace is not bad. We seem a step away from Red Bull and Ferrari, probably Mercedes as well, but the car is very difficult to drive, too difficult to be consistent and get a nice feeling consistently.
“To get the car be quick we just have to try so hard to be perfect and you can’t be perfect. I am sure everyone has similar problems in a way but we are just not quick enough yet to be there consistently enough.”
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was eighth quickest, ahead of Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar and Haas driver Oliver Bearman.
