Rob Huff happy after positive step forward in Hungary

Rob Huff clocked up two seventh place finishes on Sunday in Hungary, and along with team-mate Johan Kristoffersson who finished eighth on Saturday, displayed a fast turnaround in performance for the Sébastien Loeb Racing Volkswagen team, who had a dismal weekend in Morocco.

Huff just missed the top ten cut-off in qualifying after a mistake on his final run, but the 2012 champion dazzled in the wet-to-dry conditions in Sunday’s first race, battling his way through to seventh, despite finishing the race with a very beaten Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR.

In Race 3, Huff finished seventh again after a good start, and a close fight with PWR Racing’s Daniel Haglöf in the early stages, but was unable to pass the Honda of new points leader Néstor Girolami.

“I’m really happy with our weekend, and especially Sunday,” said Huff. “We’ve made really good progress. In qualifying on Sunday morning, the car was what I hoped for on Saturday, so it was good as we’d all worked in a positive direction, and I feel we got the most out of the car in qualifying.

“I think we made the most of very tricky conditions, and I think being British helped with the dynamics of the track being wet and racing with slick tyres. The racing was very tough, and it was very aggressive. We had a lot of damage but we survived and got some good points with seventh.

“On the whole, it’s not exactly where I want to be, to be fighting that hard just for seventh, but ultimately that’s the way the championship is now.

“We need to raise our level – which we’ve done since Marrakech, and we need to make another step ahead of Slovakia, which we know from last year was our nemesis track – but I’m really happy with the team, and the job the guys did with the car this weekend.”