Rob Huff says flat floor controversy not on his mind in Germany

Rob Huff says the flat floor debate which saw the Honda’s excluded last night and reinstated due to an ongoing appeal is not at the forefront of his mind, saying “we just race what they give us”.

The British driver, who currently sits third in the championship but stands to drop to ninth should Honda’s appeal not be upheld by the FIA International Court of Appeal qualified in seventh position at the Nürburgring after two crashes in practice, one after a suspension failure in FP1, and the other his own error in FP2.

“I was hoping to do a bit better than this in qualifying,” said Huff to TouringCarTimes. “We’ve been quick all weekend, but on the important lap at the end I just made too many mistakes and one real big slide locking up the rear. I wanted to give the Honda boys something better than that after they worked hard on the car to repair it until seven this morning.”

Huff will start from the back of the grid for the opening race following an engine change penalty due to the damage on Thursday, while the team’s qualifying results are expected to remain unchallenged by the FIA after Honda made a late decision to change all the floors to an older specification before the session.

“I’m a driver, we have no say and we don’t know anything about it,” said Huff. “As a driver you turn up and you are gifted the car they give you and you drive it. Ultimately you don’t know what some very clever engineers have done, but I’m very disappointed if we have lost P2 and P3 in the championship.”

Huff echoed his team’s statement that the floor is still considered legal, and that the change was merely precautionary in light of the panel of stewards’ decision from last night.

“We’ve changed the floor and nothing has actually changed. It’s not like the floor was worth a second. If it was, we’d continue to run it.”