Rob Huff cited ‘hard work, determination and never giving up’ as the reasons he was able to claim pole position in qualifying for the FIA World Touring Car Cup at the Hungaroring.
Huff secured his first pole position in WTCR since 2019 and his first in Hungary since 2017 with the fastest lap in Saturday’s all-important qualifying session.
The Zengő Motorsport driver had been showing strong pace all day, with top ten performances in practice, and come qualifying the Brit was lapping even faster.
In Q1 Huff was fourth fastest with a time just two tenths slower than the pace-setter, before he then went fastest of all in Q2, the first time that he has topped the timesheets since switching to CUPRA machinery.
Electing to go out second in Q3, Huff then posted a lap which was nearly three tenths faster than his rivals to claim a much-needed pole position.
“Congratulations to everyone, but the main congratulations has to go to the Zengő Motorsport team,” said Huff, who is just 18th overall in the drivers’ standings. “Those guys, they don’t give up, they keep fighting and fighting.
“You know we’ve had a horrific start to the season. Mikel [Azcona] did a fantastic job in Aragón to get a P2, but the pace just hasn’t been there until this weekend.
“That comes through hard work, determination and never giving up. So huge congratulations to them. What a time, what a place to do it. It couldn’t have been any better.”
Even though Huff’s CUPRA, along with his team-mates’ cars, is the lightest in the field this weekend, he was still surprised to have been able to secure pole position.
“I don’t want to say it was a shock, the lap time we did in Q2, but it genuinely was a shock. We’ve been hovering around the low 1m52s mark and I was the last car to go.
“I got pulled into the weigh bridge and they had a problem with the weigh bridge, so we lost some time, so we had to push really quite hard on that out lap of that second run in Q2.
“I was trying everything I could not to hurt the tyres, but get to the line before the chequered flag.
“My engineer was counting me down. We’ve got a timer in the car telling us the split time, whether we are up or down, and I was saying to these guys it was just going a tenth faster, a tenth faster.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not in my driving, just the ramping of the track just going faster and faster. We just hit the sweet spot with that and the set up and that brings us to where we are
“We knew the car was good. I really thought we could do a 1m51s again and I didn’t think we could probably do a 1m51.5s, but I was hoping a 51 something would give us a great chance for pole, and it worked out, so happy days.”