The C39 has already been spotted disguised in a special ‘snakeskin’ livery for Alfa Romeo’s filming day last week but the team had planned a full reveal on the first morning of pre-season testing.

Hot on the heels of the launch of the Haas VF-20 , the second car to be revealed at Circuit de Catalunya was Alfa Romeo’s C39, with Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi pulling the covers off their 2020 challenger less than an hour before cars were set to take to the track for pre-season testing.

F1 veteran Raikkonen, who could break Rubens Barrichello's record for Grand Prix starts this season, scored 43 points and finished 12th in the table last season. Having spent a year with the team already, he said: "It’s obviously not as big a team as where I used to be [Ferrari] but it’s a nice group of people and they’re working nicely together.

"We know we have some areas where we can’t match the big teams but we try to do the best with what we have and it didn’t really end up last year where we wanted but we had a really good first half of the season, then we struggled a bit… we can learn from last year’s difficulties and hopefully we don’t repeat it this year."

LIVE COVERAGE: F1 Pre-season Testing 2020 - Day 1 in Barcelona

The Finn's team mate Giovinazzi took 14 points to finish 17th in his first full season, with Alfa Romeo placing eighth ahead of fellow Ferrari customers Haas.

While they’ve retained the same driver line-up for 2020, Tatiana Calderon is the team's test driver this season while ex-Sauber, Williams and Renault racer Robert Kubica was confirmed as their reserve driver at the end of 2019. The Pole will drive the C39 on the opening morning of testing in Spain.