Rob Huff: “The car was brilliant”

Rob Huff was overjoyed to take his first win of the season and throw himself right back in the championship hunt after having been down in fourth just two rounds ago. The British driver is now up to second, 27 points behind team-mate Yvan Muller.

Huff had qualified in seventh place, which became sixth on the grid after the penalty for James Nash’s Ford, but an incident at Turn 4 with Tiago Monteiro’s SUNRED León and James Nash’s Ford saw the Chevrolet take heavy damage and drop down the order.

“The team did an amazing job to turn the car around (for race two) because there was a lot of damage on the car,” said Huff to TouringCarTimes. “I made the right call myself to come in to the pits a few laps early in race one and get the damage to get the sorted, because if I hadn’t have done we wouldn’t have made it out.”

“I think we hit the deck with 30 seconds to spare in the pit lane and there were 10 seconds to spare on the grid, but the car was brilliant, I loved it. One of the most enjoyable race wins I’ve ever had.”

In race two, Huff made the best of his P4 grid slot to move up to second at the standing start, and shortly passed Stefano D’Aste’s Wiechers-Sport BMW for the lead which he would maintain for the rest of the race, holding a small gap to Yvan Muller.

“It’s been a tough year so far. I can’t grumble with the results we’ve had really it’s just my two team-mates have had slightly better ones,” said Huff. “But we’re now back to second in the championship, cut the deficit by six points today. It’s a happy coincidence that Yvan won his first meeting on the eighth race last year as well…it’d be rude not to follow in his footsteps.”