Fernando Alonso believes Ferrari F1-75 was fastest car in Barcelona testing. Alonso believes Ferrari has the fastest car.

The first 2022 Formula 1 pre-season testing session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona is done and dusted and Alpine driver Fernando Alonso has picked out his former team Ferrari as the pacesetters based on his first impressions from the test in Spain.

Not for a long time has there been such great intrigue ahead of the start of a Formula 1 championship. The expectations are high in 2022 mainly because there are a lot of unknowns factors which could lead to many surprises especially in the first part of the new season, taking into consideration the huge rule changes that have been introduced for the 2022 campaign.

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was the first location to put these new challengers on show together, as the ten teams hit the track for a three-day testing session. As always, such events are not easy to evaluate so tt is never wise to judge where the teams stand in terms of pace and performance based only on the results or different stats from the testing sessions, but a lot of teams pointed out that Scuderia Ferrari looked strong as they focused on reliability over speed and did not encounter any problems during the three days in Barcelona.

The Italian side completed the most laps of any team with a total of 439 at the end of the test, while their fastest lap time, courtesy of Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc, was just over half-a-second shy of Lewis Hamilton’s best lap time. However, the Maranello team set its best time on C3 Pirelli tyres, while the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton was using the highest-grip C5 rubber.

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Former Scuderia Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso feels the Maranello team has been the fastest out there at this stage of the preparations for the 2022 Formula 1 season:

“Ferrari seems to be the fastest car, which is surely a surprise,” Spanish newspaper Marca quote Fernando Alonso as having told TVE. “For Carlos [Sainz] it’s great news and for Spain in general.”

Of course Fernando Alsono is not discounting Mercedes though, who did set the ultimate pace in Barcelona, with Lewis Hamilton topping the three-day timings thanks to a lap time of a 1:19.138, just under a tenth up on new team-mate George Russell.

“Mercedes has also turned [out] fast,” Alonso concluded.