Huff delighted with close fought Porto win

Rob Huff leaves Porto with an extended lead in the FIA World Touring Car Championship after a third and first in the two races.

The 31-year-old Briton started third in both races, and though in race one he couldn’t get the measure of his French team-mate and went on to finish third, in the second race he passed Stefano D’Aste’s BMW and went on to overtake Yvan Muller and score his sixth win of the season.

“Yvan tried to a few times to get past him (Stefano D’Aste) and he did,” said Huff.

“I made a good move on him and then obviously I had to catch Yvan. I just got my head down and put some really good laps in, and the car was absolutely awesome, best it’s been by a long way this year, a really fantastic job by the guys.”

On lap nine, Rob Huff passed Muller for the lead in the first sector down into the Turn 6 chicane.

“(Yvan) went wide at Turn 4, made a big mistake, slid sideways and had a really poor exit to the corner,” said Huff.

“I went to the other side…I was about three-quarters of the way ahead and I as I turned into the chicane I just got tapped in the rear-left. I think for me it was very much a racing incident, I had nowhere to go other than straight as I was completely sideways, it’s one of those things.”

Yvan Muller was struggling with developing handling problem prior to the pass three laps from the end of the race.

“At the first race I was struggling with understeer and we discovered just before the second race it was a problem in the diff, so we did something that worked okay, and step-by-step it looked like the problem came back and I was struggling again with understeer, so that’s why I couldn’t keep my rhythm,” said Muller.

Muller believed the pass was not as fair as his team-mate however.

“We were both side-by-side, I passed in the chicane, Rob passed outside of the chicane, okay the next time if we can overtake like this, I’ll do the same,” stated an aggrieved Muller.

Rob Huff now leads the championship with 227 points, with Yvan Muller now 29 points back and Alain Menu 60 points adrift.

Tiago Monteiro’s podium at his home circuit lifts him back up to being the top SUNRED driver and fourth in the championship, just one point ahead of ROAL Motorsport driver Tom Coronel who’s also one ahead of Gabriele Tarquini.

World Touring Car Championship Points after Porto