Alonso impressed by Ferrari testing performance

Fernando Alonso has confessed that he was just as impressed as everyone else when watching how Ferrari performed at winter testing at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, with Sebastian Vettel recording the top time and the team completing second-most laps.

Despite not being involved as a team driver in Formula 1 anymore, Alonso was present during testing over the past couple of weeks in his role as an ambassador, and potential test driver, for McLaren.

He assessed the performance of his old rivals, and Ferrari stood out above the rest.

“I think everyone was impressed in the first week they’ve been very strong not only with the performance but also with the number of laps they put every day,” Alonso told Crash.Net.

“But I remember last year it was some kind of a similar thing as well.

“They’ve been very strong all winter and they’ve been strong in the first couple of races but you know the championship is long and hopefully as long as we see a close championship like last year, I think we will be all happy.”

Having not been part of a championship battle for a while, Alonso is hoping that the midtable teams can hopefully improve enough to put more pressure on the elite trio of Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull.

“I think it’s quite similar to last year,” he said of the potential midfield battle.

“Obviously there were cars running 4 or 5 seconds slower or quicker than the morning and it’s difficult to judge on a winter test but I think it’s going to be tight, very tight, this year.

“It was last year, the midfield pack was compressed, from 5th to 10th. It seems that this year it can be the same and may be the midfield is a little bit closer to the big three, or hopefully it will be like that and we will see in Australia."

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