José María López has made an impressive start to his FIA World Touring Car Championship title defence by posting the fastest time during official testing for the upcoming season.
In cool and sunny conditions López topped the morning session at the 4.085-kilometre Autodromo Vallelunga near Rome in a time of 1m37.348s in his Citroën C-Elysée WTCC.
Leading WTCC Trophy contender Mehdi Bennani was second fastest, 0.414s down on the pacesetting Argentine with Fredrik Ekblom third quickest in the new-for-2016 Volvo S60 Polestar TC1, 0.439s further back.
John Filippi was fourth quickest in a Campos Racing Chevrolet with Thed Björk (Polestar) and Honda’s new factory signing Norbert Michelisz sixth. Tom Chilton, Grégoire Demoustier and René Münnich were also in action during the three-hour morning session.
The afternoon session runs from 13h00-18h00 local time.