Rob Huff: “The car was good enough for P2”

The new Lada Vesta turned heads when it was revealed in testing two weeks’ ago in Magny-Cours and has surprised many throughout the first weekend in Argentina despite the limited testing for the Russian marque, with Rob Huff fastest in Q1 and with James Thompson set to start today’s second race from pole on the car’s first outing.

Rob Huff set the fifth fastest time in the second free practice session on used tyres, which forewarned the pace of the new Lada Sport and ORECA developed car, with Rob Huff setting a time of 1:46.848 in Q1 to top the timesheets, a time which on its own would have qualified him third on the grid if it was produced in the one-lap shootout.

In Q2, although Huff was quick on his first run before the red flag came out as Mehdi Bennani’s SLR Citroën required recovery from the gravel bed, an engine misfire ruled out any chance of a top ten result for the 35-year-old, with his lap almost five seconds down on that of Ma Qing Hua’s Citroën.

Comparing his new car to last year’s Granta, with which he finished second in Argentina, and took victories in Beijing and Macau, Huff remarked:

“You could not have two more far apart cars, I think the gap between them is about 30 years,” he said to TouringCarTimes. “The Granta was a very difficult car to drive, it was not really a TC1 car, is was TC1.5 or something like this. The car was very heavy, the weight distribution was wrong, the car was made for metal and not carbon fibre. Now we have a car that is equal in build and in terms of weight to the Honda and the Citroën.”

“Everyone knows that we know very little about the car due to the testing, or the lack of testing, but people were worried when they saw the car when it came out of the container when it arrived here, and people were even more worried when they saw the car on the grid for the photos, and I think they can now be really worried now that we were P1 in Q1 on genuine speed.

“It’s really gutting that we had the misfire, as I think the car was good enough for the top five, and then you look at the top five times and I think we had the package to be P2 or P3, but we came here with no expectations, and we certainly didn’t expect to be where we are, but we seem to have found some good things on the car which we like, but it’s just a little gremlin that’s let us down.”

Team-mate James Thompson in the #15 Lada Vesta, set a best lap of the weekend of 1:48.033 in Q1, which vitally got him into the top 12 fight for the reversed grid, and with Huff’s misfire and Bennani’s spin, was able to grab the all-important tenth spot in qualifying, though the Briton admits there are a few technical issues that the team are still working on which could hamper his chance of a good result on race day.

“The main thing is to find out a few of the things that are not working correctly, as we’d only done 12 laps before we arrived here, so we’ve got some time to take it apart and work on a few things before the race, but every time the car’s run we have new data and new ideas,” said Thompson to TouringCarTimes.

“This weekend is the first time it’s really turned a wheel in anger, so we’re encountering a few little problems, but this is what happens with new cars; you would usually iron these out in winter testing and you’d go in with a proven package, but even with the few issues we’ve got at least we’ve managed to make it into the top ten, so this is a huge step forward, and it’s looking very positive for the future.”