Rob Huff has high expectations for Slovakia after testing display

Lada Sport Rosneft’s Rob Huff has high hopes for this weekend after a dazzling display in testing, where the British driver was almost half a second clear of the fastest Citroën of Ma Qing Hua, but fears more for reliability over pace at the Slovakiaring.

The 2012 champion took the new Vesta’s first podium result two weeks’ ago at Moscow Raceway, finishing second behind Tiago Monteiro’s Honda. With Honda and Chevrolet having had good pace over a single lap in the last three events, they’re now carrying 60kg and 50kg of compensation weight this weekend, which leaves the Lada Vesta by far and away the lightest car on the grid.

“I think we’ve got high expectations this weekend after the success in Moscow,” said Huff to TouringCarTimes. “We’ve also worked really hard on getting the right ‘ballast’ this weekend,” he quipped. “Ultimately, it’s not like in Moscow everything ran smoothly, you still need a little bit of luck in this game, and in Moscow we were lucky in that we only had one part on the car that broke, and that was the alternator in Free Practice 0. If that had happened in the race it would have been a different story.

“Everything came together perfectly for us in Moscow and that was great. On paper we should have the fastest car this weekend as we are 50kg lighter than the next heaviest car (the Chevrolet), and 60kg lighter than the other two. On a circuit like this which is over two minutes a lap, that’ll show even more. This track is also similar to Moscow, low grip, high friction, and that suited us, so I have high hopes for here.”