Alpine mostly had a productive three days of pre-season testing in Barcelona. Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon pushed out a total of 266 laps with the Spaniard setting the best finish for the team in eighth place on the first day of testing.

On the final day of testing, the session ended abruptly for both drivers while Alonso was behind the wheel. There was an issue with the hydraulics which involved a minor sealing issue that led to a fire in the back of the car.

However, despite the alarming incident on track and not being able to complete the final session of testing, Alonso remained optimistic about his new A522 challenger, especially with the updated Renault power unit.

Both Alonso and Ocon discussed their pre-season testing sessions with formula1.com 

"Well, obviously, we believe that we have a step forward on the engine, on power, but also on everything, you know?" Alonso said. 

"I think the engine has been updated in many different areas, so, let’s see if we can be a little bit competitive on that side.

Alonso also believes that focusing on reliability while combining the car’s performance and finishing races is key.     

"And [we must] keep… the reliability that we had last year; it was one of the strongest points of the car, finishing all the races and having no issues at all. So yes, you need to combine those two things: the performance and finishing the races."

Looking ahead to the second pre-season testing session in Bahrain, Alonso suspects that they will have a better idea of what to expect from their competitors. 

"Until we go to Bahrain, we don’t know even what the others did as well on the engine side and how much progress everyone did this winter," he said. 

"There is new fuel, so we all lost performance with the new fuel, and we all try to recover that. So, let’s see in Bahrain."

Esteban Ocon was only able to complete one full day of testing due to the  A522’s hydraulic issue on the last day. The 25-year old focused on the positives of his limited testing time, which consisted of completing over 100 laps during his session on track. Ocon, also revealed that they now have a better idea of which areas need improvement.      

"[Thursday] was my first proper day in the A522 and it’s certainly a great feeling to be back in a Formula 1 car and doing lots of laps," said the Frenchman after running on Day 2

"It was good to start to get a feeling for the car on proper tyres in accurate testing conditions. The most important target for us today, like [Wednesday] too, was to do lots of running, so to do over 100 laps is encouraging.

"We tested a lot of different things and we’ve given ourselves a couple of ideas to work on. We definitely have a direction on the particular areas to improve, which is the main objective at pre-season testing. It’s a positive start and I’m looking forward to discovering more," he concluded.