🇮🇹 Alvaro Barba

Álvaro Barba is a retired established professional who raced single-seaters and endurance cars at the national and international level between 2006 and 2009. He spent most of his career in Formula V8 3.5, a competitive single-class sprint championship that drew amateurs, semi-professionals and graded professionals to the same grid. He also made a brief appearance in the FIA GT Championship, racing shared endurance cars for AF Corse. Barba held an FIA Silver grading, positioning him below the full-professional Gold and Platinum grades in endurance racing.[1]

Barba contested 30 starts in Formula V8 3.5 across three seasons from 2006 to 2008, the bulk of them with Prema Powerteam. He took a single victory and five podiums in the series. His strongest season came in 2008, when he finished eighth in the championship standings and claimed four podiums from ten rounds. He also made eight starts in the FIA GT Championship in 2009, adding a sixth podium finish to his record. His career totals across both series were 38 starts, one win and six podiums.[2]

In Formula V8 3.5, Barba regularly finished ahead of Pasquale Di Sabatino, an entry-level professional with 45 starts in the series, and ran closely matched against Mikhail Aleshin, an established professional and FIA Platinum driver who went on to race in IndyCar. Barba also finished ahead of Sebastian Vettel in at least one race; Vettel contested only nine Formula V8 3.5 starts before his move to Formula 1, where he would become a four-time world champion.