GPS glitch left Rob Huff in the dark on record Macau laps

World Touring Car Cup pole-setter Rob Huff has revealed to TouringCarTimes that a GPS glitch left him unaware of just how fast his record-breaking laps were in Friday qualifying.

Huff stormed to a sensational ninth career pole at the Asian street track after topping all three segments of second qualifying, establishing the quickest lap at Macau during the TCR era in the process.

His 2:27.963 best, recorded in Q2, proved a full six tenths quicker than anybody else could manage across the entirety of the session.

Huff, however, has revealed that he was left without reference splits in qualifying and that he was “shocked” when he saw the time.

“Our GPS isn’t working on the dash so we don’t know what lap time we’re going to do,” Huff explained to TouringCarTimes. “Normally we have a plus/minus counter, but because of the bridge between [Turns] 3 and 4 it cuts the GPS signal, so up until there you know what you’re doing, but after that you don’t know what’s going on!

“So I was really surprised. I knew it was going to be a good lap, but I didn’t think it was going to be quite that good. I was quite shocked when I saw the time. It was a bit of a special lap. For sure it helped with a bit of slipstream in Sector 1 on that lap but, yeah, the rest of the lap was really good. I knew JK [Jean-Karl Vernay] was P2, four tenths off, and I saw in Sector 3 that I dropped him quite well [behind] so I knew it was going to be a strong lap.”

When asked to point out where around the lap he made the difference, the SLR Volkswagen driver wittily replied:

“I can’t tell you that, can I! Then you’ll write it and everyone else will know. That is for me only.”

Huff said his performance in Qualifying 2 was made all the sweeter coming off a more troublesome first qualifying session earlier in the day, in which he could only manage seventh after running into technical issues.

“We discovered a slightly bent damper after Q1 this morning,” said the nine-time Macau race winner. “It’s a trait of the circuit. There are some big drain covers if you like – drops, especially into Fishermen’s – and when you get there under braking the upright is obviously flexing a bit. Then when you’re braking that hard and you hit it by accident, it breaks the casing of the damper. The confidence was quite down after that qualifying, but great job by the team to turn it around and give me that car for this afternoon.”

Huff is set to start this weekend’s three races from P7, P10 (partially-reversed grid) and P1 respectively.