Rob Huff delighted after taking pole at Vila Real

Rob Huff will start this afternoon’s first race at Vila Real from pole position after putting his Sébastien Loeb Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR on top of the time sheets in Portugal.

The Briton set the pace throughout qualifying, despite four red flag stoppages, and just outqualified his SLR team-mate Mehdi Bennani by 27-thousandths of a second.

“Firstly, a huge congratulations to the Sébastien Loeb team, Volkswagen and my team-mate Mehdi Bennani,” said Huff.

“The car was mega. We were a little bit quicker on the last lap when it got red-flagged but we did the job we needed to do and stayed out of trouble, stayed out of the walls and we’ve got a lock-out for this afternoon’s race.

“The last lap that got red-flagged was the first lap when I really felt everything came together. I’d made a few mistakes and a mistake around here costs you half a second. Just to get that last lap did my confidence good even though we didn’t get to finish it.”

The races at Vila Real at the only races of the season which feature a Rallycross-style “joker lap”, which Huff recognises will be key during the race.

“It’s no secret that from the lead you want to pull away and around five seconds, that’s a safe gap for the “joker lap”. If we get a five-second gap we’ll start to do the ‘joker’. If we don’t we will have to see what we do.”