Some  positive  results  but  there  is  still  room  for  improvement,  that’s  the outcome for both the Racing Engineering cars in today’s qualifying session at Magny Cours. The base setup achieved last week and which gave such good lap  times  at  Paul  Ricard,  wasn’t  as  well  suited  as  was  expected  to  the recently resurfaced northern French track that is the venue for this weekend’s fourth round of the 2007 GP2 series Javier  Villa  and  Ernesto  Viso  have  been  improving  throughout  the  day, working closely with their engineers to get the best possible setup on the pair of Racing Engineering Dallaras. After finishing the free practice session 18th (Viso)  and  23rd  (Villa),  with  lap  times  over  the  1:24  mark,  the  two  drivers improved dramatically in the qualifying session. Javier manager to get down to a 1:22:809 good enough for a place on the seventh row of the grid, and just one second shy of the pole and one tenth away from eighth position. Ernesto also improve quite a lot on his previous best time although he couldn’t obtain a better position as he, quite understandably, suffered from a car setup that’s not yet suited to his driving style as today was the first time he has sat in the Racing Engineering Dallara. Both  drivers  were  happy  with  how  the  cars  worked  and  feel  confident regarding  their  scope  for  improvement  which  allow  the  whole  team  to  be optimistic before tomorrow’s race, the longest of the weekend, where the first target  will  be  to  look  for  positions  among  the  top  8  in  order  to  get  the  best possible starting spot for Sunday’s sprint race.

Alfonso   D'Orleans (team   principal):   ”At   the   end   of   the   day   I’m   not completely happy. We are working in the right direction but today we saw that not everything that worked at Paul Ricard was good here and now we’ve still got some tests to pass. What we have to do now is look for our weaknesses and try to work out how to solve them overnight in order to be better tomorrow for the race. Javi is well placed to do some good recovery work and I’m sure Ernesto is perfectly capable of winning races; it’s only that we have to adapt the car to him and we haven’t yet had the time to do it. The whole team has been  working  really  well  and  the  cars  worked  faultlessly  which  is  always positive” Javier Villa (driver car 14):  ”I  finished 13th  but just one tenth away from 8th which is quite good. We have been improving the whole day, since being 23rd in free practice and I’m pretty sure we can improve still further tomorrow. If we can get yet another three tenths we will be with the leaders so we will have to push from the very beginning of the race in order to be there with them.” Ernesto  Viso  (driver  car  15):  ”Things  weren’t  that  good  as  we  were  all hoping but there is a big improvement margin there, especially because we had almost no time to prepare for this first race. The car setup is best suited for a different driving style so we have to adapt it to better suit me but we are already working on this with the team”