Raikkonen wary despite strong test so far for Alfa Romeo

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The ever-concise Kimi Raikkonen has been careful not to get carried away about his hopes for 2019, despite a strong start for new team Alfa Romeo in pre-season testing.

The Finn was second-fastest at the end of Wednesday's session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, pipped by just six hundredths of a second by Toro Rosso's Daniil Kvyat right at the end of the afternoon running.

"We’ve been quite pleased with how the car is feeling, so far," he reported. "We’ve done a lot of running, which is always a good thing. But it’s very early days and we’re still learning.”

Raikkonen confident of 'big step' for Alfa Romeo

It was the first day this week that hadn't been comprehensively dominated by Raikkonen's old team Ferrari. It means that Alfa Romeo has got off to a much stronger start in Spain than Mercedes and Red Bull.

However Raikkonen didn't place much store in comparing their performance with other teams at this early point of the test.

“It’s impossible to say from testing," he said when asked if Alfa Romeo could be at the top of the mid-field teams in 2019 - or even challenging for a place among the Big Three.

"We still have a lot of things to work on," he insisted. "More work to be done than maybe in a bigger team. But I think so far it has been good.

“Maybe we’ll get some idea from next week," he offered. "But for sure, in two or three weeks - whenever the first race is - we’ll find out.

"Where we’re going to end up in the first race, we have no idea," he admitted. "So far everything is OK.

“I don’t have any expectation,” he added. “We can only do our best. But I think the team has built a good car, and I think that’s a good starting point."

Raikkonen left Ferrari at the end of last season after five years at Maranello. He's essentially swapped seats with rising star Charles Leclerc who went in the other direction.

But the 39-year-old appears to have no regrets about his new situation. If anything, he seems happier to be away from the ferrari hot house and back with the team that - as Sauber - gave him his break in F1 in 2001.

“I think from our side we’ve been pretty happy," he said. “Obviously there’s work to be done, that’s the same for everyone. But once we put everything how we like I think it should be pretty okay."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.