The Racing Engineering drivers, Javier Villa and Giorgio Pantano, set the two quickest times in the first of the test sessions scheduled this week for the GP2 Series at Paul Ricard.

All the GP2 teams are testing at Le Castellet and the Racing Engineering Dallaras have shown their potential again during the two sessions held on the first day of test. On the 3D layout of the French track, both Javier Villa and Giorgio Pantano were always among the fastest, ending the day with the two best times overall among the 24 drivers present in the test.

The two Repsol and Telefónica backed Dallaras focused their work on running quickly and also testing different setups. The configuration changes done were very positive allowing the drivers to top the afternoon time sheet, improving the best time set in the morning by iSport's Maldonado.

The Paul Ricard testing will continue tomorrow, with the drivers running on a different layout of the track that is faster and where they will mainly do aerodynamic setup work ahead of the faster tracks scheduled for the second half of the season.

Javier Villa: "All was very good. We know that we are quick and what we can do, I think it was important for the team to see what we can do. We were checking different things in the car and we improved a bit more. In the morning I was fourth, in the afternoon first and consistent all day and overall that is very important. And then the times in the afternoon were very good. I hope we continue this good trend, tomorrow it will a different circuit to check other parts of the car like the aerodynamics."

Giorgio Pantano: "For me it went all right. It important for us today to work on the car, in all the things we have to see, check, try things with the setup, and I think we did quite a good job. We understood the changes we did and I believe we improved the car. It was important today to understand how the car was working with the changes we did and tomorrow there is just the fast part, it will be mainly to understand the configuration for Monza."