Photo: WTCC Media

Rob Huff secures Lada’s best qualifying result at their home race

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Lada Sport Rosneft’s Rob Huff scored the best qualifying performance for Lada in their WTCC history at their home race at the Moscow Raceway after qualifying fourth, also taking part in the top-five pole position shootout for the first time, and the 2012 champion hails the first problem free qualifying session of the season.

Huff, who took Lada’s only two victories in China and Macau last season with the previous Granta model, set the fourth fastest time in each segment of qualifying, running at the front alongside the Citroëns of Yvan Muller and José María López, the Honda of Gabriele Tarquini and finishing ahead of independent chargers Tom Chilton and Hugo Valente’s Chevrolet Cruzes.

“We managed to achieve a good lap and that’s why we are sat here,” said Huff. “For the first time the car has been where it should be. The pace of the car has been really good all weekend, the balance of the car has been really good.

“It’s the first time in Lada history we’ve been on the top four on the grid in the main qualifying,” he added. “At the end of the day these cars don’t just magically become quick. You have to work and develop and for that you need testing mileage, which is something we have been very short of. Effectively every race weekend is where we are doing our testing and developing. It’s just fantastic to be here this weekend in Moscow with the all Rosneft and Lada support and we’ve got our best qualifying position we’ve ever had. Hopefully we can make something good of it tomorrow.”

Lada will have two realistic shots at a great result on Sunday with Huff starting fourth on the grid for race one, which translates to seventh for race two, while new team-mate Nicky Catsburg qualified ninth and will therefore start second on the grid for race two behind Honda’s Tiago Monteiro.

“(I didn’t expect this) at all,” said Catsburg “I’m super pleased with this. We used all our tyres in Q1 so I only had old tyres for Q2 but managed to stay in Jaap (van Lagen)’s slipstream and that gave me the few tenths to make P9.”