Fernando Alonso has praised Ferrari's apparent performance to start the 2019 season but believes it is too soon to get carried away.
Most believe, providing the reliability issues seen during the second test stay away, that the red cars will be the ones to beat in Australia with Mercedes and Red Bull a few tenths behind.
“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."
Now, the double world champion continued, it's about his former team maintaining their performance, something they have failed to do the past two years.
“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,” Alonso added.
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- Alonso: McLaren heading in the right direction but challenges remain
As part of his new ambassador role at McLaren, the Spaniard's attention is very on the midfield, which the British team hopes to be a big player in.
“I think it’s quite similar to last year [in the midfield],” he predicted.
“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 maybe the midfield is a little bit closer to the big three, or hopefully it will be like that and we will see in Australia.”
