The tin-top world champion seeking to tick a "missing box" in the BTCC

Rob Huff refers frequently to “stars aligning” as he talks enthusiastically of his full-time return to the British Touring Car Championship after an absence of 19 seasons since his rookie campaign of 2004. That’s no surprise bearing in mind the coincidence of life circumstances that have led the 2012 World Touring Car champion into the open arms of Speedworks Motorsport, where he will pilot one of the Cheshire squad’s Toyota Gazoo Racing GB Corolla GR Sports.

One particular aspect of astronomy can be ruled out though. Following his 18 seasons in the World Touring Car Championship, World Touring Car Cup and TCR World Tour (he skipped 2020 to go off and win the TCR Scandinavia title, as you do…), Huff still had offers to continue on the global stage despite Audi, his 2023 manufacturer, closing its customer racing department. But he said no and, at the age of 44, he’s coming home.

You can partly thank Nic Hamilton for that. After the brother of seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis abruptly quit Team Hard in the middle of last season, that squad needed a driver in the car for the Knockhill round in order to not forfeit the TBL entrants’ licence that goes with it. Team boss Tony Gilham gave Huff a call, and found some receptive ears.

“My career was very much in the world championship and I felt not finished yet,” explains Huff, “and then I got a phone call from Tony asking if I would come and help him out at Knockhill, which I gladly did.

“Career-wise, looking at the future, we’d just moved back to the UK having been abroad, and it was a great opportunity for me to come with zero pressure, help Tony out and just have an unpressurised feel of what it would be like to be back in the BTCC again. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was everything I was hoping it would be from an experience – and more.”

Huff had relocated to his native East Anglia (in Newmarket) after five years in Dubai.

Huff enjoyed his BTCC comeback in a Team Hard Leon at Knockhill last year which led to pursuing a regular gig for 2024

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“A lot of that was to do with the fact that we’ve got a lot of motorsport interests in China, with teams, the engineering side, race schools,” says a man who is big news out East, thanks to no fewer than 11 tin-top wins in Macau. “Spending three or four months of the year in China, doing the world championship, with Dubai’s airport hub it was kind of a no-brainer that there was where I needed to be. Then COVID came.

“We missed our family and friends dearly living in Dubai, and the summers are just far too hot to do anything, so we made the decision to move back to the UK to be more focused on the family.”

A strong factor in this relocation was the health of Huff’s father Peter. Like his son, Huff Sr is a tremendously popular figure in the paddocks – just a down-to-earth good bloke – and was quickly and affectionately dubbed ‘Huff Daddy’.

"It couldn’t have gone better. It’s difficult to describe, other than when it feels so right it can’t be wrong"
Rob Huff

“He’s got Parkinson’s, which is obviously pretty upsetting,” says Huff. “It’s a horrible illness, and anyone who knows Dad and me… Jason Plato [Huff’s team-mate in his BTCC season at SEAT in 2004] called us the ‘ultimate tag team’, and we always have been. We started this journey very much together.

“I’m a true believer in fate and things are meant to happen for a reason, and us moving back to the UK, Tony giving me that call to race at Knockhill, me being motivated to go and speak to the teams that I spoke to, getting this deal done with Speedworks, giving Dad the opportunity to come back racing at weekends, it’s the perfect scenario for me to tick that missing box of BTCC.

“Dad’s only 15 minutes up the road and it’s nice – he can come as much or as little as he wants. I think life has been very depressing for a lot of people in the last four or five years, and if you can help everyone and anyone in any way whatsoever to be a bit inspired, to produce a positive attitude, I will be the first one to do that, especially when it’s my family.”

Serendipitous or not, Huff’s trial test with the Speedworks Corolla came at Croft – the very circuit where the 2003 SEAT Cupra Championship that launched his career kicked off. That weekend 21 years ago, the Renault Clio Cup graduate took the first of three race wins on his way to defeating Gordon Shedden to the title – and the extraordinary prize of a works deal with the Spanish manufacturer for the 2004 BTCC.

Huff's only previous full season in the BTCC came with the works SEAT squad in 2004 before he graduated to the WTCC for 2005 at Chevrolet

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths / Motorsport Images

“That was a typical wet Croft day,” recalls Huff of his outing in the Toyota last autumn. “There’s a couple of circuits I’ve not been to for 20 years and one of them was Croft, but I got into the swing of things very quickly. I was sharing the car on the day, but from my side it couldn’t have gone better.

“We did a fairly quick sweep-through of settings on the car, and the car responded really well – and not only that but the team and I responded really well to each other. That was at a time when we were seriously looking at working together in the future, but we probably needed a trial run to make sure we all get on!

“It couldn’t have gone better. We seemed to achieve a lot in a very small amount of time on that day, and everything we achieved meant progress and faster lap times. It’s difficult to describe, other than when it feels so right it can’t be wrong.”

It also brought Huff back into the orbit of Danny Buxton, who joined Speedworks last summer as the team’s head of racing after quitting One Motorsport. Huff immediately clicked with husband-and-wife team chiefs Christian and Amy Dick when he met them at last September’s Silverstone BTCC round, but had history with Buxton. Back in 2002, they had a spectacular Clio Cup shunt at Thruxton that resulted in Buxton rolling out of the race on the exit of the Complex.

“That was the last time Danny and I spoke to each other until Silverstone last year!” laughs Huff. “We might have briefly touched on it as a bit of light-hearted banter… Danny was one of the judges on the Clio scholarship for 2002 as the reigning champion and was trying to get into BTCC, and he chose me, but he ended up back on the Clio grid. And yeah… we had a small to-do at Thruxton. We can laugh about it now, both of us still magically involved in motorsport and representing the same team.”

Talking of former Clio aces, Huff has BTCC champion-in-waiting Josh Cook in the Speedworks camp, forming one half of the team’s LKQ-backed duo alongside Aiden Moffat, while Andrew Watson is alongside him in the TGR brace after a highly impressive rookie season.

“Speedworks have done a brilliant job in putting a really good bunch of people together, off the track as well as on track,” asserts Huff, who has also grown his UK motorsport interests over the winter by becoming a director of Fewkes Sport Management. “Andrew made himself very well known at the first race at Donington last year [fourth on his debut], and he’s a thoroughly lovely gentleman. Josh and Aiden have been in the paddock a long time – a huge wealth of knowledge, and Josh the absolute maestro at Thruxton and always at the front. We will be a great little foursome.

Huff is enthused by the standard of his team-mates Watson, Moffatt and Cook, and with his first impressions of the team

Photo by: Gary Hawkins

“To have two vastly experienced drivers in Josh and Aiden, and the young – well, he’s not so young! – fresh-faced Andrew complements everything that we’re pushing for as a team. I think some people are going to be concerned about what we’ve got as a package.”

After six years in TCR machinery, what is Huff anticipating having to get his head around with the unique-to-Britain NGTC cars?

“It’s a much busier race car than a TCR car is,” he explains. “We have a manual sequential gearbox, and we obviously have the hybrid system, which means a lot more than just sitting there and using your two feet and your paddle-shift. Much more like touring cars of old that I’m used to from when I first joined Chevrolet in 2005, all the way through to when TCR started. Hybrid adds what I think is a valuable variable into it.

"The story of my career is very much being thrown in at the deep end and told to deal with it, and this is no different!"
Rob Huff

“In the sense of racing, I’ve always believed and known – and people might want to argue with it, I don’t know – that wherever you go in any championship across the world, the level of the frontrunners is always the same. The main difference is how many of those frontrunners there are. When I went to Scandinavia, I didn’t expect the level to be any easier than the World and it wasn’t. The main difference was that there were three or four of us at that level as opposed to the world championship, where it was 10 or 12.

“There’s a lot of negativity about the TCR World Tour, but the fact of the matter is that last year you had four Lynk & Cos with four pros, two Hyundais with two pros, two Audis with two pros, and then some very good other drivers. There were 10 or 12 drivers on a weekend who could win a race.”

Huff won two of the 20 in his Comtoyou Racing Audi and damn near claimed his second world title in a thrilling three-way showdown in Macau, against Hyundai’s Norbert Michelisz and Lynk & Co’s Yann Ehrlacher. With three laps remaining, he was right behind Ehrlacher’s second-placed team-mate Santiago Urrutia, and if Huff got past then his team-mate Frederic Vervisch would surely let him through for the race victory and the title. But then Urrutia checked his momentum exiting the tight Dona Maria turn, and Huff ran into the back of him, flipping his bonnet up and smashing the Audi’s windscreen.

“That’s racing for you…” he sighs. “We were not in the fastest car but as a team, and team-mates, we worked far better than anyone else did and that put us in a position where we were going to win a world championship.

Huff enjoyed his time on the world stage in TCR racing, and came close to the 2023 title after joining the Comtoyou Audi team

Photo by: WTCR

“What Fred and I achieved last year I think will go down in the books as one of the best years we’ve ever had – it was amazing to have that collaboration. When you’ve raced on a grid where you have Plato, Muller, Menu, Larini, Rydell, Tarquini, Monteiro – they’ve all achieved greatness but I don’t underestimate BTCC whatsoever.”

He just needs to recalibrate. Remarkably, Huff’s 36 race wins from 397 starts in world tin-top championships came at 24 different circuits.

“Beijing Goldenport in a Lada through to Macau – there’s quite a variation in there!” What about Anneau du Rhin? “Ah, the club circuit… There’s some circuits that people won’t even have heard of, but I’m ready for this, I’m excited about it.”

Can he add to his pair of 2004 wins at Brands Hatch and Snetterton in the BTCC? As ever in this series, pre-season testing is at a premium. Huff got down to serious work in the Corolla for the first time since his Croft run-out across two days at Brands earlier this week, and ended Wednesday's official test an encouraging second in the times.

“I’d love a bit more time in the car, but then I’m sure everyone else would as well,” says Huff. “I did a little shakedown when we went to Toyota’s test track in Derby a couple of weeks ago, to tick a few little boxes on updates, which went very well. But the story of my career is very much being thrown in at the deep end and told to deal with it, and this is no different!”

Can Huff replicate the form that yielded the 2012 WTCC title on home soil?

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images