The 2012 World Touring Car champion is back in the BTCC for his first full-time campaign since 2004. What’s driven his move from the global stage to the Speedworks Toyota line-up?
MARCUS SIMMONS
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. “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 champ
