Rob Huff keeps race two result and moves up to fourth in points

Münnich Motorsport’s Rob Huff has moved up to fourth in the drivers’ championship hunt after a strong weekend at Porto, taking fifth in race one and second in race two after the stewards decided to only reprimand the reigning champion for cutting the Turn 2 chicane.

Huff had finished fifth in race one behind the four Chevrolet Cruzes of Yvan Muller, Tom Chilton, Michel Nykjaer and Pepe Oriola after a strong charge forward from eighth on the grid, and then made a good start in race two to pass team-mate Marc Basseng for second and challenge bamboo-engineering’s James Nash in the early stages before suffering with a braking issue.

“For a street circuit Porto’s incredibly hard anyway, and the pressure’s on a bit this year for me to do well again, and obviously in a car that’s not quite as quick as the Chevrolet,” said Huff.

“It makes life a little bit harder when you start struggling with the brakes from lap three.

“I was just having to brake very early and do the best to try and keep everyone behind. I know we are investigation for cutting the chicane, but at all the circuits we’ve been to this year it’s three times and you’re out, and I did it twice.

“Normally we change the brakes between the races but the brakes were fine in race one, and in qualifying and in warm up and so on so we thought if there’s no problems with the brakes, if it’s not broken don’t fix it, so we didn’t change them, but now I think that was probably a big mistake.”

Huff was able to defend his position against Michel Nykjaer’s Nika Racing Chevrolet in the final stages of the race, but was forced to cut the chicane to keep the position on lap five. The stewards have decided to issue Huff with a formal reprimand, and so he keeps his second place and now finds himself fourth in the standings, moving up ahead of Honda’s Gabriele Tarquini.