The first six races of the 2019 FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) have been part of a difficult opening to Rob Huff‘s campaign as he looks to move Volkswagen up the order.
The Slovakiaring saw the first update to the Balance of Performance, however, this didn’t affect the Volkswagen quartet as they returned to a standard ECU, rendering them on sixty kilos of compensation weight for the third weekend in a row. Despite this, Huff managed to enjoy his best weekend so far.
The Sébastien Loeb Racing driver put his year of touring car knowledge to good use, securing the race two pole position on what was the reverse grid. With rain coming across the circuit at the start of race one, the British driver put on his Sunday best and went all out, making up eleven positions to finish thirteenth.
Sébastien Loeb Racing remained at sixty kilo’s over the weekend. Credit: Florent Gooden / DPPI
“It’s been a great weekend at what we thought would be our bogey circuit. We had a tough first qualifying session, however, that gave us more than what we could have hoped for with the reversed grid pole,” explained Huff.
“I’m very pleased with fifth, it’s our best result yet and when we get to Volkswagen’s home race at the Nurburgring we should be able to take some of the lead out of the car and finally be on the same level as the rest.”
With all three races running on Sunday, Huff was again on good form in race two, defending as hard as he could on a dry track against faster competition after starting well from pole position.
Huff fought hard in race two to take fifth place, despite starting from pole position. Credit: Florent Gooden / DPPI
Giving all he could, the Volkswagen driver finished in fifth place. Race three was more difficult as Huff spent most of it fighting with last year’s champion Gabriele Tarquini lap after lap.
An error by PWR Racing’s Daniel Haglöf saw the Swede make contact with the British driver after Haglöf had locked his brakes. Huff avoided the gravel trap and carried on to finish thirteenth again.
With the 2019 WTCR Race of The Netherlands only days away, Huff is already looking for more improvements this weekend.
“Zandvoort is next up in just under a week, and that track was good to us last year, so I can’t wait until next week and see what we can do.”
