How threat to set Vauxhall Nova alight almost lost Huff title-winning drive

Touring cars

A "stupid answer to a stupid question" nearly torpedoed Rob Huff's touring car career, as he explains in our latest issue

2 Rob Huff Chevrolet Macau 2011

Huff (seen here in 2011) became a mainstay of the WTCC, winning the title in 2012

DPPI

As tales of negotiating motor sport’s treacherous junior snakes and ladders pathway go, Rob Huff’s is a classic.

The 2012 World Touring Car champion scrimped and saved in his early years just to make it as a professional, having to win nearly every time he went out as well as relying on the goodwill of others to make it to the next step.

But, as Huff explains in this month’s Motor Sport magazine, he nearly blew it all when he was on the verge of clinching his dream drive – after ‘threatening’ to set a Vauxhall Nova alight.

From the archive

Huff had hauled himself up the junior system through winning various young driver prizes in the early 2000s. He came first in the Jim Russell World Scholarship, claimed the Tim Sugden’s ‘Be a Racing Driver’ prize and then won Seat Cupra Cup, the baptism of fire ‘reward’ of which was to be Jason Plato‘s team-mate in the BTCC for 2004 in the RML-run Seat team.

With RML then set to join the WTCC for 2005 with Chevrolet, it wanted promising young driver Huff – who had at last scaled one of motor sport’s challenging peaks – to be part of the team. However, as he reveals for the first time to Damien Smith, he nearly lost his dream chance at the starting line.

“Chevrolet had agreed on the details of a three-year contract and RML called me in to sign,” he says. “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?’

Rob Huff and team mates at RML

Huff’s move to RML for the WTCC 2005 almost went begging

Newspress

“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.”

Desperately trying to save his nascent racing career, Huff had to contact the journalist concerned and get him to clear up the context and spirit in which the piece was written. Much to his relief, the explanation was accepted.

“It then took three weeks for that to go around, before I got a call from Ray to say, ‘Come and sign your contract,’” he remembers. “Three weeks of hell. That one stupid answer to a stupid question was almost the non-starter for an eight-year career with Chevrolet.”

From there Huff became a mainstay of the WTCC and the touring car fraternity in general, claiming a popular world title for the ‘Bowtie’ in 2012, winning out against grizzled veteran team-mates Yvan Muller, Alain Menu and tin-top virtuosos like Gabriele Tarquini and Tom Coronel.

The championship would cement Huff’s reputation as one of the very best out there, and he still races now as one of the ultimate touring car utility men.

Rob Huff Chevrolet Macau 2011

Huff (seen here at Macau in 2011) would eventually win title over Muller, Tarquini and others

DPPI

As he remembers with some relief though, it all nearly didn’t happen but for one theoretically conflagrated Vauxhall Nova.

Read the full story in our April 2023 issue.