Even with a seven-car incident initially caused through the three-way clash between new championship leader Jean-Karl Vernay, M1RA’s Roberto Colciago and James Nash, Vernay’s team mate Rob Huff felt that there was more promise to come from his Golf GTi after a solid third place finish in race one.
“We knew that race two was going to be a big fight, we changed the car a little bit and on the two out laps we did the car felt fantastic – it felt like we’d made a big step forward it,” said the 2012 WTCC champion, who now heads to Argentina for this weekend.
“We saw that the pace of Jean-Karl was very good as well. I had a good start and managed to jump my team-mate Jaap [van Lagen]. To be fair after Portugal [two weeks ago] I was quite pleased quite a quiet race, as we didn’t have the pace of the guys in front of us.
“It’s obviously disappointing to be caught up in the race two incident – I thought I’d really managed to avoid it because I was on the right, then on the left, then back on the right.”
Huff was unable to avoid the spinning Golf of Giacomo Altoè, who moved across the track into the Briton’s path, before an unsighted Stian Paulsen’s SEAT León went in to the back of the #3 Golf.
“I almost came to a stop because I saw Altoè going across the track in front of me, so I knew I was going to have to literally stop and turn right, but pretty much as soon as I got into second gear I got a huge hit from behind and obviously that put me out with quite a bit of damage to the car.
“I’m hoping that it’s not really big damage to the car, because obviously the car’s got to go in the next 24 hours, so I don’t want to give the boys too much work when they get to Thailand.”
The 37-year-old now moves into 14th in the standings on 44 points, just three behind fellow countryman Daniel Lloyd, who showed his prowess around the 3.667km circuit, with Huff admitting that he was taking events “quite easy.”
“I had the pace over James [Nash] behind me in race one and I knew quite quickly after two or three laps that I wasn’t going to be able to stay with the guys in front.
“So I just managed the gap to James behind, brought the car home and didn’t take any risks with the kerbs as there’s been quite a lot of punctures this weekend.”