Rob Huff has said he is ‘not sure what tomorrow will hold for WTCR’ with the series facing doubt on Friday evening about whether all drivers will take part in Saturday’s races on the Nürburgring Nordschleife following tyre issues.
After several teams and drivers experienced delaminations on Thursday, Goodyear brought in a new batch of rubber for Friday in case there was a manufacturing issue with Thursday’s tyres.
However, several drivers continued to experience delaminations and vibrations in qualifying. Attila Tassi had a delamination halfway through the session, as well as Yvan Muller early in the session.
Then on his final flying lap, Zengő Motorsport’s Huff suffered from a delamination which caused him to lose control of his CUPRA and crash into the barriers.
“It was nasty crash and all from a vibration from the rear tyres,” said Huff, who ended up with the 12th fastest time.
“I had just started that lap and at the beginning of the lap I had a bit of a vibration and it just seemed to get worse and worse and worse.
“But I knew it was my last shot and of course the racing driver inside you goes ‘you’ve got to keep pushing, you’ve got to try and beat the lap time you’ve done already’ and I think the wiser old man that is starting to come through was sitting on the other shoulder was going ‘you should really just lift out of this and admit defeat that today is not your day’.
“It’s frustrating because I think we had a car that could have been capable of doing an [8 minute] 51 [second lap] and being in the mix.
“It was just a huge vibration on the rear and I turned into the corner in fifth and it just gave me a little snap of oversteer and I caught it and then it gave me and even bigger snap of oversteer.
“Obviously, there’s not much room for error and unfortunately that resulted in quite a big crash, but like I say I’m absolutely fine.
“The boys are busy repairing the car – there’s no chassis damage which is great news – it’s just a lot of cosmetic damage.
“There are obviously concerns over tyres as much as anyone else. I know we’re super safe on setup.
“Dániel [Nagy, team-mate] and I have both experienced big problems with tyres – it was Dani’s problem as well with huge vibrations and he just did four laps of the GP track to try and get rid of the vibration and couldn’t, so he couldn’t do a competitive lap time at all because of vibrations and that’s because of tyre problems.
“Speaking openly, no one seems to be able to understand what the problem with the tyre is, we can only assume it’s a construction problem which isn’t happy with the new surfacing here at the Nordschleife.
“Everyone is working hard to try and figure out why, but we’re looking at other teams and they’re having far, far bigger problems than us.
“We got unlucky with where it happened to us and the result.
“It’s a big shame but the team spirit here at Zengő is to never give up, to keep pushing, and the car will be ready for tomorrow.
“I’m not sure what tomorrow will hold for WTCR but let’s see what happens tonight.”