As expected, Scuderia Ferrari's Friday at the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit was particularly busy. As well as all the usual work, in preparation for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix that starts at 15 CET, the team had a few updates to assess on the SF-23. The team worked in preparation for qualifying, but focused especially on race pace, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz both doing plenty of running with a heavy fuel load, while trying different tyre compounds.

In the first session, the team ran a comparison test between the aero package used so far with Charles and the new one with Carlos. Both drivers started the session on the C1 compound prototype tyre that Pirelli plans to race for the first time at the British Grand Prix. After a dozen or so laps, they then switched to the Medium compound. In the middle part of the session, they then switched to Soft tyres on which both drivers set their best times, Charles doing a 1'15"694 and Carlos a 1'15"726. For the final 15 minutes of the session, the cars took on more fuel to run in race configuration. Leclerc did 28 laps and Sainz 27.

Prior to the second session which started at 17 local time, the mechanics fitted the updated aero package to Charles' car also, so that both drivers were running the same specification. Unlike the other teams, the Scuderia started off with a qualifying simulation, using two sets of Soft tyres. On the second of these, Leclerc lapped in 1'14"246, seventh best, while Sainz was eighth fastest with a 1'14"274. With half the session remaining at this point, the Scuderia then switched both cars to race configuration, with more fuel on board, while using Soft tyres as well as the prototype C1 compound. Charles and Carlos completed 32 laps each. The cars will be back on track tomorrow at 12.30 CET for the final hour of free practice, prior to qualifying at 16.

Charles Leclerc: It has been an interesting day, as we had some new parts to try, so we ran very different programmes between the two cars. It was a productive day as we got through all the tests we wanted to do even if it's difficult to read where we are in terms of performance right now.

We will keep pushing to try and make the steps forward that we want in order to be more at ease with the car tomorrow and then we will be able to see where we are. For today, it's clear that although Red Bull has the edge over everyone, the rest of the field is very, very tight.

Carlos Sainz: There were plenty of new things to try today on the car and we were constantly adapting to the setup changes and analysing the differences between parts across the two sessions. We also tried all three compounds, so overall it has been a full day of preparation for the rest of the weekend.

Thanks to everyone cheering from the grandstands today, it feels great to see so many people at the track already on Friday!

Check out our Friday gallery from Barcelona here.