With several 1.22.0-preview versions somewhere after 85 I2C performance is extremely slow.
For example the following code on a board with RP2 PICO and firmware 1.22.0-preview.132 takes 'ages' to complete:

from machine import I2C
bus =  I2C(1)          # scl=7, sda=6
bus.scan()

With firmware 1.22.0-preview.85 and same code, same hardware response is almost instantaneous.