TCR World and life

24 INTERVIEW The British driver’s first taste of TCR machinery came near the end of 2015, soon after having signed to race for Honda for the 2016 WTCC. He teamed up with car builders JAS Motorsport in order to race at his favourite event, the Guia Race of Macau, and also aid WestCoast Racing team’s championship bid with Gianni Morbidelli to try and win the first TCR International Series drivers’ title. “That came about because Gianni was in with a shout of winning the championship, and he was the only driver on his own,” said Huff. “SEAT were also in the fight, and they had good representation at the time with Comini and Pepe. Mads Fischer from JAS got in touch with me and I went to the Cervesina circuit, which is the Honda test track in Italy, and did half a day driving the car, and it was very different to what I’d been used to driving - it was the first time I’d ever driven paddle- shifts on a front- wheel drive car, and it was also on a very hard Michelin tyre. ” Huff went on to snatch pole position, a full 1.6 seconds clear of his closest rival, Honda team-mate Kevin Gleason, and went on to win the first race nearly eight seconds ahead of Jordi Gené’s SEAT León, claiming his eighth career win at the circuit. The race two grid was as race one finished, with Huff on pole again, but Huff and Gené both fought over the same space into the first corner, coming together and spinning across the packed 24-car field, causing chaos in a race in which only nine cars made it to the chequered flag. “It was a great weekend, and it was all going to plan up until race two. We went and showed that what we had done in the past in Macau wasn’t a fluke; and that we could do exactly the same job in TCR cars as well. It was a cracking weekend aside from the mishap with Gené into the first corner.” In 2017, Huff embarked on a new relationship in TCR with Volkswagen Motorsport - driving their 2016 championship-winning Golf GTI in the TCR International Series for WRT in a partial season, successfully supporting team-mate Jean-Karl Vernay’s title challenge, before signing on with Sébastien Loeb