Rob Huff calls for higher levels of compensation weight

Lada Sport Rosneft driver Rob Huff has said that 60kg of compensation weight doesn’t mean as much under the new TC1 technical format as the previous TC2T rules, and believes the compensation weight should be increased to at least 80kg.

The race-by-race compensation weight is designed to close the performance gap between the different models of cars, but not entirely override any advantage. However, heading to the Slovakiaring, with Lada running unballasted at 1,100kg while Citroën and Honda were on full ballast at 1,160kg, expecations were that Citroën would be fending off the Moscow podium finishers this weekend, but instead the French marque ran away with an almost perfect score with 1-2-3 in qualifying and both races.

“I think the difficult thing to understand is why Citroën are gaining so much in sector two,” said Huff to TouringCarTimes. “I was speaking to (WTCC manager) Francois (Ribeiro) yesterday, and I was saying I don’t think 60kg is enough, as 60kg of ballast was all calculated on TC2. The cars now are 100 horsepower up the road, we have much better tyres and are more aerodynamic, so we calculate it’s about to 37% less effective than it was on a TC2 car, so to get it back to the same gap it needs to be about 80-85kg.”

Although Citroën seem unfazed by the 60kg, which they have now run at every event since they joined the WTCC as the fastest performing car, the additional weight appeared to throw Honda out of balance this weekend, which dropped from three-tenths of a second behind Citroën in recent events to over a second off the pace in Slovakia.

“The fact is it’s affecting the Honda and the Chevrolet as it should,” admitted Huff. “But it’s not affecting the Citroën as it should. The weight should have made the difference in sector two here, as that’s where all the twisty stuff is, but there they’re a second faster than everyone.”