Brazilian Augusto Farfus posted the fastest time in the N.Technology run Alfa Romeo 156 during this morning's first official session of the two-day FIA World Touring Car Championship test at the Monza circuit in Italy. As the start of this year's championship approaches, six track test sessions - each lasting one hour - will take place during the course of today and tomorrow, with the official presentation of the series to the media also taking place. Monza will host the opening rounds of the 2006 series which take place on 1st and 2nd April.

Thirty four cars (including eight from the Italian Superturismo series) are taking part in the Monza test's, with the official teams from BMW, SEAT and Chevrolet all present. Alfa Romeo are being represented this year by Fiat Auto's competitions' arm N.Technology who are nominally running as a private team although they will be ellegible to score manufacturers' points.

Youngster Augusto Farfus is the only survivor from last year's official factory team which took part in the inaugural FIA World Touring Car Series, and he will be expecting to build on his first series race victory which came during the finals round at Macau last November. The highly rated 22-year-old Brazilian will be joined by former Formula 1 driver Gianni Morbidelli (36) and Salvatore Tavano (26), the latter who has gained plenty of experience of the 'Super Touring' class Alfa 156 Romeo racer after driving it regularly over the last two years.

This morning, in damp conditions at Monza, it was reigning FIA WTCC champion Andy Priaulx who set the initial pace to begin with in his BMW.
 

As the times started to drop the drivers leading the timesheets regularly changed, with Rickard Rydell, Jörg Müller, Dirk Müller and Alain Menu all holding the top spot at some point. However, it was Farfus who posted the fastest overall time of the session, a lap in 2:11.498, which he turned in with less than two minutes of the opening session remaining. N.Technology team-mates Gianni Morbidelli and Salvatore Tavano set the third and fourth best times respectively, a strong showing of competitiveness that bodes very well for the track challenge of the ageing Alfa 156 this year.

Priaulx broke into the stranglehold of the Alfa Romeo pack as he posted  the second best lap time in 2:12.241 at the wheel of his BMW Team UK rrun BMW 320. BMW Team Germany drivers', Jörg and Dirk Müller achieved the 6th and 7th fastest times. Rydell turned in the best result of the SEAT Sport squad, which is six strong this year. His time of 2:12.770 was the fifth fastest overall, while his team-mate James Thompson occupied the final position in the top ten. Despite holding the fastest lap for a while, Menu’s time of 2:13.432 was the 8th quickest overall. Fellow Chevrolet driver, Robert Huff was just 0.004 seconds behind him in 9th place.