The additional power provided by the new engine – believed to be around 25 bhp – led to a new lap record at the Paul Ricard circuit, as Villa's time on Wednesday was 0.101 seconds quicker that the previous record set by Romain Grosjean last year. The Super Nova driver eventually finished the day 0.149 seconds ahead of closest rival Lucas di Grassi.
The Brazilian looks set to a fresh new start in the GP2 Series, following his finished testing duties with Renault F1 team. He debuted into the new Racing Engineering car yesterday and showed consistent pace throughout the testing session, finishing ahead of GP2 Asia leader Kamui Kobayashi, Campos Racing's Romain Grosjean and ART's Pastor Maldonado.
Super Nova and DAMS were the only 2 teams at Paul Ricard to put both their cars into the Top 10 in the Wednesday time charts. On the other hand, yesterday's back-runners were Trident Racing, Ocean Technology and David Price Racing.
Here are the complete testing
1. Javier Villa (Super Nova) 1:11.930
2. Lucas di Grassi (Racing Engineering) 1:12.079
3. Kamui Kobayashi (DAMS) 1:12.140
4. Romain Grosjean (Campos) 1:12.262
5. Pastor Maldonado (ART) 1:12.270
6. Andreas Zuber (Fisichella) 1:12.300
7. Alberto Valerio (Piquet) 1:12.439
8. Luca Filippi Super (Nova) 1:12.481
9. Davide Valsecchi (Durango) 1:12.509
10. Jerome d'Ambrosio (DAMS) 1:12.574
11. Edoardo Mortara (Arden) 1:12.607
12. Roldan Rodriguez (Piquet) 1:12.742
13. Diego Nunes (iSport) 1:12.774
14. Vitaly Petrov (Campos) 1:12.893
15. Nico Hulkenberg (ART) 1:13.010
16. Dani Clos Racing (Engineering) 1:13.138
17. Sergio Perez (Arden) 1:13.182
18. Giedo van der Garde (iSport) 1:13.221
19. Karun Chandhok (Ocean) 1:13.356
20 Davide Rigon (Trident) 1:13.362
21. Hamad Al Fardan (Trident) 1:13.477
22. Luiz Razia (Fisichella) 1:13.584
23. Michael Herck (DPR) 1:13.788
24. Nelson Panciatici (Durango) 1:13.860
25. Giacomo Ricci (DPR) 1:14.961
26. Alvaro Parente (Ocean)
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