Two decades on from his last competitive appearance at the circuit, Rob Huff extended his outstanding record at Croft in North Yorkshire last weekend (27-28 July), reaching the rostrum for TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK as the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship resumed from its summer break.
Croft has always been a happy hunting-ground for Huff, and it was also the scene of his maiden test in the Speedworks Motorsport-prepared Toyota Corolla GR Sport last autumn, which proved to be the catalyst for a full-time BTCC comeback this season for the first time in 20 years.
The former FIA World Touring Car Champion was on the pace throughout free practice, going on to progress safely through the opening two parts of qualifying to crack the ‘Quick Six’ for the first time – ultimately snaring fifth spot on the grid amongst the 20 high-calibre contenders in the UK’s premier motor racing series.
With all competitors needing to use both the soft and hard Goodyear tyre compounds over the course of race day, Huff elected to take the pain early on by bolting on the slower hard option for the curtain-raising contest. He did a superb job to limit the damage in taking the chequered flag seventh, more than ten seconds clear of the next-best driver on the same rubber.
In race two, that strategy paid off richly. Now on the soft tyres, the Cambridgeshire ace scythed his way swiftly up to second after neatly clearing Dan Cammish and opportunistically taking advantage of a squabble between Ash Sutton and Colin Turkington to leapfrog them both. The only driver then remaining in his way was Tom Ingram, but the championship leader fell prey to the charging Corolla at Tower Bend on lap five.
In front of the live ITV4 television cameras and a capacity trackside crowd, Huff remained in control until lap 13, when he came under attack from Speedworks stablemate Josh Cook. The pair swapped places following a crowd-pleasing doorhandle-to-doorhandle duel through the Jim Clark Esses, before the Fewkes Sport Management athlete and director slotted in behind to seal a Toyota one-two, less than three-quarters-of-a-second shy of a second victory of the campaign.
What’s more, the result secured Toyota a third Manufacturers’ trophy of 2024, with the Japanese carmaker the only one to have scored maximum points more than once in the BTCC this season.
From seventh for the reverse-grid race for the day’s finale, Huff made a bright start to latch onto the battle for the runner-up spoils. The 44-year-old climbed to fourth prior to conceding ground to multiple title-winners Turkington and Sutton, both of whom had more hybrid at their disposal. Never giving up without a fight, his sixth-place finish made him the weekend’s joint-fourth highest-scorer, with his personal best haul of the campaign elevating him from 11th to ninth in the overall classification.
In the sister British-built Corolla, Andrew Watson did not enjoy quite the same success but nonetheless dug deep to put some more points on the board. The 29-year-old Belfast native – the BTCC’s reigning Jack Sears Trophy winner – made it through the first part of qualifying and went on to line up 12th, when less than six hundredths-of-a-second would have lifted him three spots further up the grid.
Watson held position in races one and two, and while a ‘gamble’ in a bid to extract some more performance in race three failed to pay off, the Northern Irishman was able to rejoin the fray following a pit-stop to encouragingly post his quickest laps of the day. He will travel next to Knockhill in Scotland on 10-11 August sitting 14th in the championship standings.
Christian Dick, Team Principal, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK, said: “Whenever you return to the track after a break, there’s always an element of the unknown as although you know what you’ve done to improve your own car, you don’t know how much progress anybody else has made – but right from the start of the weekend at Croft, it was pretty clear that we have taken a significant step forward.
“It was great to see Rob advance to the ‘Quick Six’ for the first time, and he then did a fantastic job to hang on so well on the hard tyres in race one, which set him up perfectly for his starring drive in race two. It was enormously gratifying for the entire team to take a one-two finish, and just the kind of performance that really inspires everybody to keep pushing to achieve bigger and better things still over the remainder of the campaign.
“Even if he didn’t come away with the same kind of results, Andrew raced similarly hard all weekend and found himself embroiled in the thick of battle throughout. He was unfortunate to be forced out of race three by a suspension issue, but he excelled at Knockhill last year and I am very confident he will bounce back straight away when we head north of the border in a week’s time.”
Rob Huff, Driver, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK, said: “Croft has always been a great circuit for me, and we were fast straight out-of-the-box. The team has done a stellar job to develop the Toyota and bring some upgrades to the table – we’ve made big steps forward and the upshot is a car that is nimbler and more drivable, which is exactly what we were targeting. Around a track that historically has not been one of the best for the Corolla, Josh [Cook] and I were up towards the sharp end and scrapping it out with the boys at the front all weekend.
“I set my sights on reaching the ‘Quick Six’ for the first time and getting back on the podium, both of which we accomplished. We did exactly what we were aiming to do in race two – that was the whole point of our strategy on Sunday, and it played out really well. It was brilliant to reward everybody in the team with a one-two finish.
“Clearly I would have loved to have got the win myself, but Josh had a bit more pace than we did and pulled off a great move. If it had been anybody other than my team-mate, I probably would have made life a bit harder for them!
“There’s obviously more work needed to keep this improvement going, but ultimately, I’m very pleased. The result is huge testament to the whole Speedworks crew for the effort they have put in over the summer break – they’ve got these cars singing now, and we’re where we want to be.”
Andrew Watson, Driver, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK, said: “It was a difficult weekend at Croft, and it felt like we were on the back foot with the set-up from the word ‘go’. We tried to establish a stable platform to work from in FP1, but then FP2 was affected by the weather and after that we never really got the car in the window.
“That in-turn impacted our qualifying performance, which cost us probably a couple of tenths, and when it’s as super-close as it is in the BTCC, you simply can’t afford to give that kind of time away – the championship is so stacked that getting into the top six in any session is tough.
“We didn’t have the outright speed in the races either, which meant we struggled to move forward. We took a gamble by making some adjustments to the suspension for the last one, but that didn’t work out and I had to pit so we could tweak it again.
“After that, we went the quickest we had all weekend and set some really competitive lap times – and obviously Rob had a great day, which is really positive and proves that the pace is clearly there. Now we just need to unlock it on my side of the garage as well...”
