Mehdi Bennani took his turn in the FIA World Touring Car Championship spotlight by going fastest in official WTCC testing at Vallelunga in Italy this afternoon as preparations for the new season stepped up a gear.

The Sébastien Loeb Racing driver’s 1m37.000s effort eclipsed fellow Citroën C-Elysée WTCC driver José María López’s 1m37.348s set in the morning to underline an impressive performance by the Moroccan, a favourite for honours in the WTCC Trophy for independent racers.

“We want to fight in the general classification because this is what the people understand,” said Bennani. “We have been on a good pace and we hope to use it for this year and be stronger.”

López, the reigning WTCC champion, was sharing Citroën’s test car with team-mate Yvan Muller. Although he was quickest in the morning, he revealed that his stint wasn’t without problems.

“We had a plan but we didn’t really go through the plan,” he said. “We had a problem with the front damper and lost a little bit of time through that. Especially in the first sector it’s a bumpy track and you compress a lot. It was not a major problem, a pre-season problem when you have new things so I am not worried and we were in the top [in our session].”

In cool and sunny conditions, Thed Björk marked the start of Polestar Cyan Racing’s WTCC adventure by going second quickest in the afternoon for third overall as the Volvo S60 went up against its WTCC rivals for the first time.

Tom Chilton completed the top three in the latter session on his first try of his new-for-2016 Citroën C-Elysée. But it was a day of mixed fortunes for 21-year-old John Filippi, the WTCC’s youngest driver, who crashed heavily in the afternoon having gone fourth quickest this morning in his Campos Racing Chevrolet. Norbert Michelisz was fourth fastest for Honda with Yvan Muller fifth for Citroën and Fredrik Ekblom completing a strong showing by Polestar in sixth.

Testing continues at the Rome track tomorrow (Thursday 3 March). The 2016 WTCC season fires into life at Circuit Paul Ricard in France from 1-3 April.