Rob Huff back on the top step in Budapest

33-year-old Rob Huff was back to his winning ways in the unfancied SEAT León in Hungary, and launches himself into third place in the drivers’ championship after a slow start to the season.

The reigning world champion was forced to fight hard behind Gabriele Tarquini’s Honda in race one to hold fourth place, defending against first Tom Coronel’s BMW and then Mehdi Bennani’s, whilst in race two a great start put him up into second place from third on the grid, and then after the safety car intervention, he was able to drive around the outside of Bennani’s BMW into Turn 1 to snatch the lead.

“I knew the last time Mehdi led a race was Sonoma and he threw it away, so for sure I knew he wasn’t going to do anything like that again and I thought there was a possibility we could capitalise on that and we did,” said Huff to TouringCarTimes.

“That was the best Mehdi’s ever driven for sure, the most sensible, the fastest and least amount of mistakes I’ve ever seen him make and he thoroughly deserved to be up on the podium.”

On the first corner pass after the safety car came in, Huff added:
“He was really fair, I think I did most of the move in the braking, and then I managed to get on the outside but he didn’t try and run me off wide, yes there was a bit of contact but it’s touring cars.”

Rob Huff’s win was his first since Shanghai last year, and at a track where the SEAT teams struggled. The next best placed SEAT in race two was the car of Tom Boardman down in 15th position.

The next round of the championship is at the Salzburgring in Austria, where Huff admits the strategy will be similar to that employed in Hungary.

“I’m looking at race twos all the time now…I need to find a slipstreaming partner, whether that’s Marc (Basseng) or Pepe (Oriola) or anyone else in a SEAT. I think it’ll be a struggle to do the top five but the top ten is feasible, and see if we can do a race like we did here.”