Rob Huff: “Probably one of the best moves I’ve ever done”

Rob Huff pulled off a daring pass around the outside of Gabriele Tarquini in the second race at Curitiba to take his third win of the season, and as a result took the biggest haul of points of all of the drivers in Brazil.

The 32-year-old British-driver started from eighth spot on the reversed grid race two, which effectively became seventh after Darryl O’Young was forced to start from the pit-lane with a gearbox problem. Huff quickly worked his way up the order after getting ahead of the two slow-starting Bamboo Chevrolets as the lights went out, passing Tiago Monteiro’s SUNRED and Norbert Michelisz and Tom Coronel’s BMWs in the first few laps, with his two Chevrolet team-mates in tow on each pass, but his progress stalled when he got to race leader Tarquini.

With a slight gap now behind to Alain Menu, Huff made his move on Tarquini around the outside of Turn 1 at the start of the eleventh lap, and went on to take the win.

“That was probably one of the best moves I think I’ve ever done,” said a jubilant Huff. “It’s not very often you go on the outside of Gabriele. The car was awesome…Duncan (Laycock), my engineer helped me change the car and the boys and the mechanics did a fantastic job. The car was awesome, and I could just put it where I wanted to.”

“There was no way I was going to get past (Gabriele) on the straight as we just didn’t have the power on him, but I could see he was braking quite early and I thought we’ve got to do it.”

After qualifying third and finishing third in race one, combined with his win in race two, Rob Huff scores 43 points across the whole weekend whilst Yvan Muller, with pole, a win and fourth position picked up 42 points, with Huff therefore closing the gap by just one point.

Consistency also paid off for Alain Menu, qualifying second and taking second in both races saw the Swiss-driver pick-up 40 points and the gap to Muller in the Championship standings increases by just two points.

A strong weekend for Lukoil Racing Team driver Gabriele Tarquini with a podium finish in race two saw the Italian move ahead of Tom Coronel in the standings and into fourth position.

The championship gap is now just 17 points with 220 left to play for in the remaining four rounds. Whilst mathematically speaking anyone in the top eight can still win the Championship, in reality it’s a straight fight between the three Chevrolet drivers.

WTCC Drivers’ Championship Standings after Brazil