Rob Huff: The Motor Sport Interview

Rob Huff describes himself, with a self-deprecating chuckle, as a motor racing “journeyman” when he reflects on a colourful career as one of Britain’s best touring car specialists. But the negative connotation attached to that word does Huff a massive disservice given the high esteem in which he is held by his tin-top peers. The Cambridge-born racer, who turned 43 on Christmas Day, is best known for becoming a World Touring Car champion in 2012 and for his record 11 victories at the famous Macau street track, but the headline status stuff is just the tip of a heart-warming and entertaining racing story. A more accurate description would be to label Huff the modern equivalent of Steve Soper. High praise, especially as Motor Sport crowned ‘Soperman’ our number one in a list of the 20 greatest ‘saloonatics’ back in 2005, just as Huff’s career was building a head of steam.

“At no point was there a plan that I was going to be a racing driver“

In 2023 Huff is heading into his 20th season as a touring car professional, on the back of a year in which he found himself resigned to a role of underdog in what turned out to be the last World Touring Car Cup. Still, it brought out the best in a driver who has always thrived on adversity, his alliance with Hungarian minnow Zengo Motorsport catapulting him into unlikely title contention in a Cupra León only delivered to the team a matter of days before the first race. Huff scored a pair of wins and a clutch of podiums to easily claim the independents’ title, and he reckons second overall in the final standings would have been on had he not missed the penultimate round when Zengo’s perilous financial state bit hard.

“I drove better last year than I ever have,” he tells us from Spain, where he and his partner are relocating after six years living in Dubai. And he promises there’s more to come too, beyond his star turns in historics at Goodwood, for a driver who prides himself on his international outlook to touring car racing – much like Soper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZCx0deh4bw

Motor Sport: You seemed to thrive as an underdog with Zengo in the WTCR. Is that a fair point?

Rob Huff: “The last time I drove this well was probably 2011 when Yvan Muller pipped me to the WTCC title. Even in my world champion season [a year later] I didn’t drive as well or as clever as I did in 2022. I took the opportunities when they were there and made the best of bad situations. We finished every race in the points and I’m 100% sure if we had done Bahrain we would have finished P2 in the championship.”

You’ve walked an interesting path, heading overseas instead of settling as a star of the British Touring Car Championship. Was that by design or chance?

RH: “There’s been no design in my career! I’ve been hugely lucky: right place, right time and I guess I impressed the right people to do what I did. It’s no secret I don’t come from a motor sport family at all. My father is just a huge fan. He started taking me when I was a kid. We started doing indoor karting, then Dad bought a twin-engine endurance kart which we raced together. It snowballed from there.

“Dad was a chartered surveyor, as was Will Hoy who was local to us. Dad would do a bit of business with him and Will invited us to BTCC events. Dad and some of his friends were always going to Le Mans, lads in a camper van, and he got involved with Simon Harrison who ended up in the BTCC with Peugeot. But at no point was there ever a plan that Robert Huff was going to be a racing driver.”

Like so many before and since, you got your first break through the Jim Russell racing school, didn’t you?

RH: “On my 18th birthday Mum and Dad bought me the week-long course, then I did the Silverstone school championship. Off the back of that I was entered into the Jim Russell World Scholarship. We knew nothing about racing at this point. We’d done all the activities and were waiting for the announcement of the winner. My dad was saying, ‘There’s no way you’ve won this, don’t even think about it.’ Sure enough, they announced my name. Dad was more blown away than I was. That put us in a Formula Vauxhall Junior with Don Hardman, with whom Joey Foster has just won his fourth Walter Hayes Trophy. And we won what was the last ever Vauxhall Junior championship.”

So how did you end up in touring cars?

RH: “We did well in the Formula Palmer Audi winter series, finishing second. At that point Kimi Räikkönen had just won Formula Renault and had gone straight to Sauber in Formula 1, so everyone in the UK was trying to do Formula Renault. We got about half a budget together, started the year, had a great scrap with Colin Brown who was the reigning world karting champion, then ran out of money halfway through the season. That was the end of that. Alongside this I was racing an MGB, which was through a lad I went to school with whose father owned an MG dealership just up the road. After the money ran out we just stuck with the MGB.”

So what changed?

RH: “My sister spotted an advert for Tim Sugden’s Be a Racing Driver scholarship. It was about £600 to enter it, and you could enter even if you had experience. It was mad. I was already an instructor at race circuits by now and the guys sitting beside me as judges I worked with during the week. Each year it was a lottery whether Tim wanted to take a complete rookie or someone with experience. The two previous years he’d gone with rookies, so I was in the right place at the right time and got announced as the winner, which put me in the Renault Clio Cup for a season, for free with Tim. That was an amazing year. There were 36 cars on the grid. It was huge and the quality of driver was brilliant. We had F3 champions joining because it was a route into touring cars and I finished third in my first year.

“I’ll never forget the first time I drove the car at Donington in the wet. Dad had come up. I got out of the car after my first run and he could tell by the smile on my face it fitted me perfectly. It just clicked with me straight away. I was good in single-seaters, but the first time I drove a front-wheel-drive touring car… I oozed confidence with it.”

Then in 2003 you won Seat’s Cupra one-make championship. How did that happen?

RH: “Again, it was a case of what do we do? I was a BRDC Rising Star, went to the club and asked for some help. They put me in touch with Howden Ganley. He said, ‘Robert, the only thing you can do, the only way you can get where you want to be is to go with a manufacturer that is supporting young drivers to get through to the top.’ Seat had launched the Cupra series and the prize was a BTCC drive in their new team alongside Jason Plato. With my mum and dad we sat around the kitchen table and thought about as many ideas as possible to come up with some money. They put in as much as they could, then friends and local businessmen through Dad came on board. We won the title. That put me in the BTCC alongside JP with RML – the real start to the fairy tale.”

What was it liked being team-mate to Jason Plato at Seat?

RH: “I absolutely loved it. It was amazing. I’d never had a team-mate or a proper team before, so it was a huge eye-opener – and I thrived. I learnt a lot from Jason, soaked it all up like a sponge. Then about halfway through the year my engineer and I decided to go in our own direction on set-up for what was right for me. That’s when it clicked. Jason was very hard. If he was quicker than me he was my best mate; if I was quicker than him he didn’t talk to me. But that in itself taught me a lot and it mentally prepared me for dealing with Alain Menu, Nicola Larini and Yvan Muller in the future.

“Jason was probably the toughest, but that is what allowed me to be so good against the other three. I loved every second of that year and I can never thank Jason enough for being the way he was with me.”

You only did that one season of BTCC, in 2004. Why?

RH: “In 2005 Seat was going to run the BTCC programme itself and RML was stepping away. Scott Dennis, who was in charge of the BTCC programme for Seat, wanted me to stay but nothing had been agreed. Then RML came to me, which was a complete surprise. I knew nothing about networking because my path had been laid out for me through scholarships. They called me into a meeting, made me sign a non-disclosure agreement and explained they had a three-year contract with Chevrolet, had signed Menu and Larini and wanted a young gun for the new WTCC. This is the stuff dreams are made of.

“They told me to go away and think about what I’d need for a three-year contract. What do you ask when you know nothing? The only thing I could think of was to phone my old mate Plato and ask him in confidence where I should be at. OK, we didn’t always get on, but at the same time I think I’m one of the few people who really does get on with JP! He helped me a lot. He told me what he did when he went to Williams [when he landed his BTCC Renault drive in 1997] and advised me on what I should go with. I went back to RML and it was no problem.”

The chance of a lifetime?

RH: “Yes, but I nearly lost it. I don’t think anyone knows this. Chevrolet had agreed on the details of a three-year contract and RML called me in to sign. I rang Dad and said, ‘Tuesday morning, take the morning off work, come with me, I’ve got something a bit special.’ A lovely father and son moment. We arrived at RML super-pumped. Then Ray [Mallock] said, ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem.’ The blood drained from Dad’s face. They presented me with a copy of Autocar. They used to run a short, quick-fire Q&A with random questions, the last of which was, ‘If you had a gallon of fuel what car would you light on fire?’ Growing up as a kid, I hated Vauxhall Novas because all of my mates had them – so I said, ‘Vauxhall Nova.’ I’d done this article six months ago, before I knew anything about Chevrolet. Who owns Vauxhall? And Chevrolet? General Motors. Someone in Zurich in the Chevrolet office had spotted this and a note had gone around. Now they were sitting there reading that I wanted to torch one of their cars! Unreal.

I was a 24-year-old clueless racing driver. The only way we could try to smooth it out was to get in touch with the journalist – I can’t remember his name – and get him to write a letter to explain when the interview was done. It then took three weeks for that to go around, before I got a call from Ray to say, ‘Come and sign your contract.’ Three weeks of hell. That one stupid answer to a stupid question was almost the non-starter for an eight-year career with Chevrolet.”

“I learnt a lot from Jason Plato, soaked it all up like a sponge“

Your rivalries with Menu, Larini and then Muller were fierce. But it all paid off when you won the WTCC in 2012, didn’t it?

RH: “I should have beaten them in 2011. That year I was the fastest Chevrolet driver. I had more pole positions and race wins, but Yvan fired me off when I was leading at Donington. He went on to win and we arrived in Macau at the end of the year with me 30-odd points behind him. I had to take pole, win race one and the reverse-grid race too – which I did, the first person to do the double in Macau. He finished one place better than I needed him to finish, beat me by three points, 433 to 430. I probably deserved it more that year than in 2012.

“All the way through I’d wanted to do my best to win, but in 2012 I got dirty. I reverted to what Jason had taught me and I played the game against Muller the same way Jason had. In the end I won 2012 because Muller messed up big time in Shanghai and in America at Sonoma. In Sonoma we were chasing Franz Engstler for the lead, Yvan was second and I was third, and Yvan fired into him and pushed him out, got a drive-through penalty and I won the race.

“Then in Shanghai Menu was leading, Muller was second and I was third and going into Turn 1, Muller fired Menu off, took them both out and I won. That secured the championship for me really. I just had to finish the races in Macau. I took a very different view that year and ultimately that won me the championship.”

How did you get on with those drivers?

RH: “Do you want the truth?! No, great days, great memories. I get along with all of them really well now. Yvan invited me to his 50th birthday party. I was one of only very few drivers there. Jason and I, we hang out at Goodwood as much as we can when I’m back in the UK. I wouldn’t change any of it.”

Then you ended up racing a Lada, the car maker we all used to joke about growing up!

RH: “He-he! Impressively, the Lada I raced holds the outright record for a touring car at Macau and it’s currently sat in the Macau museum with a waxworks of me sitting in front of it, telling the story of my record 11 wins at the circuit!”

So how did you end up in a Lada?

RH: “Chevrolet announced it was finishing at the end of my 2012 title season. I’d lived in the RML bubble for years, but now I’d have to bring some sponsorship to the table. They ended up with Yvan and Tom Chilton. The FIA Awards were in Istanbul, where FIA GT1 world champion Marc Basseng told me his boss René Münnich had bought three Seats for the WTCC. Could I advise them? A week later the phone rang and Marc told me René wanted to put me in one of the cars for next year. It went pretty well, but fighting RML’s [now non-works] Chevys was always going to be hard and we finished fourth in the points, although I won at Macau again.

“Then the TC1 rulebook had been launched. Before Macau I was getting on a plane somewhere in Asia and James Thompson was with me. He asked on the steps boarding a plane what my plans were for the next year and I said that I had no idea. He told me, ‘Lada is going into TC1 and the boss has asked me to pick a team-mate. I’d be more than happy if you’d like to come and join us.’ From there, we forged a mega relationship for two years to tackle Lada and the TC1 regs.”

Was it fun breaking our old perceptions and prejudices?

RH: “It was mega! Being James Thompson’s team-mate was enough in itself. That was an eye-opener of how to go racing and really enjoy yourself… We knew we weren’t going to be super-competitive – you’re never going to be against the likes of Citroën, RML’s Chevrolet and a well-funded Honda. But to share with Jimmy those two years of absolute mayhem on and off the track… I loved it. And we grabbed the opportunities when we could. We won two races, in Beijing and again in Macau.”

Since then you’ve chiselled out a remarkably varied career. You won a touring car title in Sweden driving a Golf in 2020 and you’re well established on the Asian scene. You’re a true international…

RH: “Journeyman!”

But you must pinch yourself when you consider where you came from.

RH: “It’s been amazing. And I don’t want to think about it coming to an end, because it’s been just the most amazing 20 years. To grow up watching the BTCC on Grandstand in the afternoons to then end up being in the BTCC with the one and only JP as your team-mate, then racing against Matt Neal who I’m good friends with… To then go on to the world championship and race against Gabriele Tarquini, Muller, Rickard Rydell, Larini, Menu… the list goes on. You sit there wondering what on earth has happened.”

But it hasn’t come easily to you, has it?

RH: “At the end of 2019 Volkswagen pulled the plug after a really tough year in the WTCR [with Sébastien Loeb Racing]. It was great having Johan Kristoffersson and Mehdi Bennani in the team. We all got on. We were the saviours of each other because it was a horrible year. The Balance of Performance was all wrong, we had no pace, and it was awful. We made the mistake of going early on with the Magneti Marelli ECU and that was a disaster. Then we changed back. We had to take more weight so it was a disaster even more.

“I love racing with the underdog. It fits my personality“

“I’d had a few tough years, including a massive crash with Mehdi the year before in Vila Real. That still hurts my body today. It mucked my back up and sitting still for more than two hours on a plane gives me a problem. I had no real prospects for 2020 so I thought I’d go and enjoy myself racing in Asia, where the doors are open to me. Covid came and that put an end to that. Then Volkswagen called and asked whether I’d be interested in a programme in Sweden. I’d followed STCC and really fancied a change. There were very little politics compared to the world championship. You didn’t really need a BoP because everyone had a VAG car, and it was proper grass-roots racing. I got my love back for motor sport. The Lestrup Racing team was amazing. The tracks reminded me of old-school Snetterton and Brands Hatch. Just proper, gritty racing. We smashed it in the first year.”

Tarquini went on until he was nearly 60 and Muller is still active. There’s a new TCR World Tour in the offing. You could have another 10 years…

RH: “I hope so. As I say, last year I drove as well, if not better, than ever. I’ve still got great speed, I’ve got maturity and I feel I know more than others about winning championships. I put that to really good use last year. I’m not ready to give it up. I want to race at the top level. I love that environment. As much as we’ve had the huge ups and downs with Zengo, I love racing with that team, with the underdog. It fits me and my personality, and we do bloody well together. So why not?”