Photo: WTCC Media

Rob Huff has a tough double-weekend in Spa and Germany

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Rob Huff had yet another disappointing weekend in his Lada Granta at Spa-Francorchamps. The 2012 World champion missed out on Q2 and, from thirteenth on the grid, could only manage a sixteenth in Race 1 and P13 in the second heat.

Huff was also racing at the Nurburgring 24 hour race during Saturday night, but a mechanical failure during in the early hours meant the Rotek Racing Audi TTRS retired while second in class.

“It’s been a really busy weekend for me, as I was also doing the Nurburgring 24hrs, and both were a little bit disappointing as we had mechanical issues in Germany,” said Huff to TouringCarTimes.

“As for Spa, we know the speed is not there with the Lada so, for this year, especially on that kind of circuit there was no chance we could have good results.

“It was always going to be very difficult this weekend because the car is struggling with top speed, so we did as good as we could. We tried to experiment something a little different in qualifying, which didn’t work but allowed us to learn something new about the car.”

Despite not having scored any interesting results this year, Huff’s endurance efforts do not mean he is falling out of love with touring cars:

“I have a long contract with Lada, I want and will stay in touring cars”, said the Brit. “I like endurance racing as well, I’ve done a lot of races in this discipline, I just enjoy it and if I can combine those races with my World Touring Car Championship job then I’m happy to do it. Of course the WTCC is still my main focus and will be for a long time.”

Huff keeps himself motivated by enjoying the development work the team is carrying out on the Granta, with a view into making the car much more competitive next year:

“To be honest, as a driver my job is to jump in and drive it as fast as I can. Don’t forget we struggled for four years with Chevrolet before really enjoying it for another four, so we need to work. It’s interesting to develop, test and try to make the car better, I enjoy it so much as a different aspect of the sport. All in all, the project has a really good future and hopefully good results will come.”