Photo: WTCC Media

Rob Huff enjoys fight with Muller at Marrakech

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Rob Huff took his best result of the year with fifth in race one, fighting with former Chevrolet team-mate and rival Yvan Muller during the beginning of the race, but a DNF in race two after contact with Fernando Monje ended the Briton’s day early.

After a great start from seventh on the grid in race one, Huff was up to fifth and then was able to overtake Yvan Muller for fourth further around the lap, and then managed to defend the position for two laps before the pair came across Mehdi Bennani’s Proteam BMW, who’d rejoined the race after earlier damage.

“Mehdi got seriously in the way, but then we’re in Morocco and I guess no one’s going to do anything to him,” said Huff to TouringCarTimes. “There were no blue flags, none at all, and I’d like to know why.

“He’s the reason why Yvan had the opportunity to overtake me, and he just shouldn’t have been there…if that was me coming out the pit lane into the middle of the front-runners of the race, I’d expect my engineer to be on the radio telling me to stop stop stop at the end of the pits, or I’d have seen it coming and just slowed down on the straight on the inside and let everyone past and joined the queue.

“It was a really good fight with Yvan, I didn’t think he was going to stop when he came up the inside of me, but I saw him coming and I defended, but then I saw he braked a good five meters later than me so I got out of the way, we both got around the corner and we had a good race.”

Huff’s second race lasted less than a lap, after passing team-mate Marc Basseng on the standing start, the British driver was battling with Fernando Monje’s Campos Racing SEAT into the final hairpin, when the two came together, with Huff coming off worst with broken front suspension.

“It was stupid, because where does he expect me to go?” said Huff. “I’d made a lunge down the inside and I was alongside him otherwise we wouldn’t have had the side-by-side contact we had…so I was definitely in my right to make the move I made and he just closed the door on me.”

Huff adds ten points to his tally at Morocco and moves up to ninth in the Championship standings heading to Slovakia, just five ahead of Honda’s Tiago Monteiro.