Robert Peter "Rob" Huff (born 25 December 1979) is a British professional racing driver. He currently competes in the
World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) driving for
Zengő Motorsport
Zengő Motorsport is a Hungarian motor racing team founded by Zoltán Zengő. They currently compete in the World Touring Car Cup and others TCR championships. The team also used to compete in the SEAT León Eurocup, where they won driver's titl ...
. He was the
2012
File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...
World Touring Car Championship
The FIA World Touring Car Championship was an international touring car championship promoted by Eurosport Events and sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). It has had several different incarnations, including a s ...
champion and the
2020
2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in ...
Scandinavian Touring Car Championship
The Scandinavian Touring Car Championship (STCC) is a touring car racing series based in Scandinavia. The series took over from the Danish Touringcar Championship and Swedish Touring Car Championship, with its first season in 2011. The Scandi ...
champion.
Racing career
Early years
A Christmas Day birth in 1979 in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...
, Huff had a long junior career in karting. He attended
St Faith's School and
The Leys School
The Leys School is a co-educational independent school in Cambridge, England. It is a day and boarding school for about 574 pupils between the ages of eleven and eighteen, and a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.
Hist ...
, Cambridge, from 1993 to 1996. He won the 2000 Formula Vauxhall championship, and class B of the 2001 Ethyl MG Championship (also finishing as runner-up in this series in 2000). His father's Chartered Surveying firm has been one of his main sponsors.
British Touring Car Championship
Huff entered the big time by winning the inaugural
SEAT Cupra Challenge in 2003, winning a paid drive in the
British Touring Car Championship
The Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship is a touring car racing series held each year in the United Kingdom, currently organised and administered by TOCA. It was established in 1958 as the British Saloon Car Championship and was renamed as ...
(BTCC) for the next season alongside former champion
Jason Plato
Timothy Jason Plato (born 14 October 1967) is a British racing driver who last competed in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) for BTC Racing. He has twice been BTCC Champion, in 2001 for Vauxhall and 2010 for Silverline Chevrolet. ...
as a result. He battled on track with Plato in the second race at
Thruxton but later lost his front splitter and retired, doing so again in the third race of the day. Huff started fifth at
Brands Hatch
Brands Hatch is a motor racing circuit in West Kingsdown, Kent, England, United Kingdom. Originally used as a grasstrack motorcycle circuit on farmland, it hosted 12 runnings of the British Grand Prix between 1964 and 1986 and currently hos ...
and he was leading just before the safety car came out. He led away at the restart but was demoted to second by
Matt Neal
Matthew Neal (born 20 December 1966) is a British motor racing driver. Neal is a triple BTCC Champion having won the British Touring Car Championship in 2005, 2006 and 2011. Neal is also a record 6 time BTCC Independents Champion having won th ...
on the following lap and those position stuck until the end of the race, Huff claimed his first BTCC podium. He started round 8 at
Silverstone
Silverstone is a village and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is about from Towcester on the former A43 main road, from the M1 motorway junction 15A and about from the M40 motorway junction 10, Northampton, Milton Keynes and B ...
on the reversed grid pole but second placed starter
Kelvin Burt took the lead straight away and Huff soon fell victim to the
Vauxhall
Vauxhall ( ) is a district in South West London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. Vauxhall was part of Surrey until 1889 when the County of London was created. Named after a medieval manor, "Fox Hall", it became well known for ...
of
James Thompson. A collision with
Michael Bentwood
Michael Bentwood (born 10 January 1978 and based in Altrincham) is a British auto racing driver. After starting racing in Karting, he entered the 1994 Formula First Winter Series, finishing the season in tenth. In 1995 he finished fifth in the F ...
in the second race at
Mondello Park
Mondello Park is Ireland's only international motorsport venue and is located in Caragh, County Kildare off the R409 regional road, approximately from Dublin city centre.
History
The Mondello Park short circuit was designed on farmland nea ...
meant Huff was disqualified and he started race three from the back. Huff eventually fell down to 7th place but he scored his second podium of the season in the third race. He claimed his first BTCC race win in round 24 at Brands Hatch and he repeated this success a fortnight later at
Snetterton. He adjusted well, finishing 7th overall in the championship. In 2017, Huff made a return with Vauxhall at
Silverstone
Silverstone is a village and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is about from Towcester on the former A43 main road, from the M1 motorway junction 15A and about from the M40 motorway junction 10, Northampton, Milton Keynes and B ...
as a step in for
Tom Chilton
Thomas James Chilton (born 15 March 1985) is a British racing driver. He has spent most of his career competing in touring car racing; he was a former factory Vauxhall and Honda driver in the British Touring Car Championship, and currently driv ...
after he got ruled out on medical grounds.
He led for a majority of race 3, but eventually dropped behind
Matt Neal
Matthew Neal (born 20 December 1966) is a British motor racing driver. Neal is a triple BTCC Champion having won the British Touring Car Championship in 2005, 2006 and 2011. Neal is also a record 6 time BTCC Independents Champion having won th ...
late in the race and finished second, scoring the team's best result of the season.
World Touring Car Championship
Chevrolet (2005–2012)
The
SEAT
A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but also headquarters in a wider sense.
Types of seat
The following are examples of different kinds of seat:
* Armchair (furniture), ...
BTCC team was run by
Ray Mallock
Ray Mallock (born 12 April 1951 in Barton on Sea) is a British former racing driver.
He competed in the British Formula One Championship from 1978 to 1980.
He is chairman of RML Group, the motorsport and automotive engineering group he founded.
...
in 2004, and when his company took on the fledgling
Chevrolet WTCC project, they retained Huff. At the season opening
Race of Italy, he finished ahead of his more experienced teammates
Alain Menu
Alain Menu (born 9 August 1963) is a Swiss racing driver who is currently working for Team BMR as a driving coach. He was one of the most successful touring car drivers of the 1990s, winning the prestigious British Touring Car Championship twic ...
and
Nicola Larini
Nicola Larini (born 19 March 1964) is an Italian racing driver. He participated in 75 Formula One Grands Prix, debuting on 6 September 1987. He finished second in the tragic 1994 San Marino Grand Prix on a substitute outing for Ferrari, but only ...
in race one. He collided with the
BMW of
Antonio García in his home race at Silverstone, forcing him to retire. In what was a difficult season with the new car, Huff's best result of 2005 was a sixth place in Mexico and with it he took the first points for the Lacetti in the WTCC. He finished the year joint 20th with
Stéphane Ortelli
Stéphane Ortelli (born 30 March 1970 in Hyères, Var, France) is a Monégasque professional racing driver with three world championship titles. He has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in with Allan McNish and Laurent Aïello and the Spa ...
in the drivers' championship with only the three points scored in Mexico. That year he also did a one off in the guest car of the
Porsche Carrera Cup GB, but collided with championship contender
Tim Harvey
Tim Harvey (born 20 November 1961) is a British racing driver, best known for being the 1992 British Touring Car Champion, and the 2008 and 2010 Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain champion. A household name in the 1990s, Harvey won sixteen rac ...
in race one.

In
2006 he finished fourth at
Brands Hatch
Brands Hatch is a motor racing circuit in West Kingsdown, Kent, England, United Kingdom. Originally used as a grasstrack motorcycle circuit on farmland, it hosted 12 runnings of the British Grand Prix between 1964 and 1986 and currently hos ...
, which was his best result of the first half of the season. He was taken to hospital after an accident at
Puebla
Puebla ( en, colony, settlement), officially Free and Sovereign State of Puebla ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 217 municipalities and its cap ...
. At the following event at
Brno in the Czech Republic, Huff started 24th due to two 10-place grid penalties, but he fought through to eighth place in the first race, which gave him pole for race 2 – giving him a lead he never relinquished en route to a first WTCC win, and the first for Chevrolet in the dry. However, the rest of the season was short on results, he finished 16th in the final standings.
There was an improvement in form once again from the Chevrolet team in
2007
File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto ...
, Huff took a further win at the
Scandinavian Raceway
Anderstorp Raceway, previously known as Scandinavian Raceway, is a motorsport race track in Anderstorp (Gislaved Municipality), Sweden and the sole Nordic host of a Formula One World Championship Grand Prix, when the Swedish Grand Prix was he ...
in Sweden, plus three more podiums, including his part in a Chevrolet 1–2–3 at
Porto
Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropo ...
. These results ultimately left him ninth overall in the series, but behind team-mates Larini and Menu. The team took a win at every new circuit introduced for the 2007 season.
He opened
2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing ...
with four pointless races, but came in first and second in the two races at
Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...
. He was disqualified from the second race of the
FIA WTCC Race of the Czech Republic
The FIA WTCR Race of the Czech Republic is a round of the World Touring Car Cup, which is held at the Autodrom Most in the Czech Republic.
The race took place between 2006 season and 2011 season in the Masaryk Circuit.
Winners
{{WTCC rac ...
due to his car having an illegal anti-roll bar linkage. At Brands Hatch he made his 100th WTCC start, qualifying third and taking the lead after a lap one collision between Menu and pole sitter
Augusto Farfus
Augusto Farfus Jr. (born 3 September 1983) is a Brazilian professional racing driver, and BMW Motorsport works driver. He lives in Monaco.
Early years
Born in Curitiba, Farfus first tasted racing in minibike races and won the local champions ...
. He led until a puncture three laps from the end. He finished the season third in the championship, behind
SEAT
A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but also headquarters in a wider sense.
Types of seat
The following are examples of different kinds of seat:
* Armchair (furniture), ...
drivers
Yvan Muller
Yvan Muller (born 16 August 1969 in Altkirch, Haut-Rhin) is a French auto racing driver most noted for success in touring car racing. He is a four-time World Touring Car Champion, winning the title in 2008 with SEAT, in 2010 and 2011 with Chev ...
and
Gabriele Tarquini
Gabriele Tarquini (born 2 March 1962) is an Italian racing driver. He participated in 78 Formula One Grands Prix, debuting on May 3, 1987. He scored a single championship point, and holds the record for the most failed attempts to qualify. He ...
.

For
2009
File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...
, Chevrolet switched to the
Cruze chassis. Huff did not make the best of starts to the season, failing to progress through to Q2 at the
Race of Brazil and scoring no points. It was not until the
Race of Morocco when things picked up; Huff took pole position and won the first race to take his first points of the season and the first win for the Chevrolet Cruze. He qualified fifth at the
Race of France but a good start meant he passed pole sitter Andy Priaulx and then Farfus on the second lap to take his second win of the season. Huff qualified on the front row for his home event, the
Race of UK. He passed pole sitter Menu and led away from the restart after the safety car but was re-passed Menu, depriving Huff of a home win and putting him under pressure from the BMW of Priaulx. Huff qualified sixth for the
Race of Germany but dropped to sixteenth on the grid after an engine change incurred a ten-place grid penalty. A first lap incident in the first race eliminated Huff along with
Jörg Müller
Jörg Müller (, ; born 3 September 1969) is a Dutch-born German BMW factory driver.
Racing career
Born in Kerkrade, Netherlands, Müller won the titles in 1989 German Formula Opel Lotus Challenge and in 1989 European Formula Ford 1600.
The 1 ...
,
Jordi Gené
Jordi Gené Guerrero (born 5 December 1970) is a racing driver who competed in the World Touring Car Championship between 2005 and 2010. His younger brother, Marc is also a ex-racing driver and is currently a Brand Ambassador for the Scuderia F ...
and Farfus. Gené caused an accident in the first race of the
Race of Italy, making contact with Huff under braking who then made contact with
SEAT
A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but also headquarters in a wider sense.
Types of seat
The following are examples of different kinds of seat:
* Armchair (furniture), ...
of
Rickard Rydell
Rickard Rydell (born 22 September 1967) is a retired Swedish racing driver. He won the 1998 British Touring Car Championship, the 2011 Scandinavian Touring Car Championship, and has also been a frontrunner in the European/World Touring Car Champ ...
. Huff escaped any serious damage to hold onto third. He took pole position for the season finale at
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
and dominated the first race. Huff finished the season ranked fifth in the championship, ahead of teammates
Alain Menu
Alain Menu (born 9 August 1963) is a Swiss racing driver who is currently working for Team BMR as a driving coach. He was one of the most successful touring car drivers of the 1990s, winning the prestigious British Touring Car Championship twic ...
and
Nicola Larini
Nicola Larini (born 19 March 1964) is an Italian racing driver. He participated in 75 Formula One Grands Prix, debuting on 6 September 1987. He finished second in the tragic 1994 San Marino Grand Prix on a substitute outing for Ferrari, but only ...
.
In 2010, he finished the championship third behind new teammate Yvan Muller and Tarquini.
The Chevrolet Cruze was the dominant car in
2011, winning all but three races. The Chevrolet drivers were in a title battle all of their own, with Huff leading the championship early in the season. Muller took the lead later on, taking the battle right down to the last event at
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
. Huff won both races but this was not enough to stop Muller taking the title, his second with Chevrolet and his third in total.

In
2012
File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...
, Chevrolet announced this to be their last season in WTCC. The Chevy Cruze "blue train" with Huff,
Yvan Muller
Yvan Muller (born 16 August 1969 in Altkirch, Haut-Rhin) is a French auto racing driver most noted for success in touring car racing. He is a four-time World Touring Car Champion, winning the title in 2008 with SEAT, in 2010 and 2011 with Chev ...
and
Alain Menu
Alain Menu (born 9 August 1963) is a Swiss racing driver who is currently working for Team BMR as a driving coach. He was one of the most successful touring car drivers of the 1990s, winning the prestigious British Touring Car Championship twic ...
was again dominant over the field, taking 20 wins out of 24 races in the season. Muller took nine wins and led the championship for most of the season, Huff showed consistency and finished in the points for all the races except two. Finishing behind Muller did not seem enough until Muller tagged Menu from the lead in Shanghai, the penultimate round of the championship, sending Menu into a big slide and letting Huff through to overtake both of them and win the race. Menu lost a vital race win and Muller was given a penalty after the race, putting him out of the points altogether, giving Huff a big lead in the points. Menu was furious with Muller, saying "Yvan ruined both of their championships". In the final round in Macau, Huff was a clear favourite with a 37-point lead over Menu and 42 over Muller after qualifying on pole. In the first race though, drama unfolded. Huff lost the lead to Muller on lap one and overtook him on lap four to regain the lead but right after made a driving error and touched the barrier twice, forcing him to retire with damage. Muller won the race ahead of Menu, both reviving their chances for the championship. Huff's car got repaired for race two, with the help of both Menu's and Muller's crews in Chevrolet. Huff started the race eighth and had to finish fifth to secure the championship. On lap four, Yvan Muller ran into the back of
Alex MacDowall
Alexander "Alex" Hay MacDowall (born 22 January, 1991) is a British auto racing driver. He is currently competing in the 2014 FIA World Endurance Championship season for Aston Martin Racing.
Racing career
Early career
MacDowall was born in Car ...
's Chevrolet coming out of Mandarin, the fastest corner in the WTCC calendar, which spun MacDowall into the wall hard. The race was effectively finished with two safety car periods. Huff finished the race second behind Menu and ahead of Muller, with Chevrolet's campaign in World Touring Cars ending on another 1–2–3 finish for the team. Second place points were more than enough for Huff to win his first World Touring Car title and the first title for a British driver since
Andy Priaulx
Andrew Graham Priaulx, MBE ( born 8 August 1974) is a British professional racing driver from Guernsey. In 2019 he raced for Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK in the FIA World Endurance Championship, and Cyan Racing Lynk & Co in the FIA World Tour ...
in 2007.
Münnich Motorsport (2013)
Huff joined
ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport in February 2013, driving one of the team's
SEAT León WTCCs and replacing
Markus Winkelhock
Markus Winkelhock (born 13 June 1980) is a German professional racing driver. He is the son of Manfred Winkelhock and nephew of Joachim Winkelhock, both of whom were Formula One drivers in the 1980s. During his brief Formula One career he led the ...
in their line-up for the
2013 season. He failed to set a time in qualifying for the
Race of Italy having collided with the
Wiechers-Sport
Wiechers-Sport is a German auto racing team which is based in Nienburg. The team was first established in 1999, competing in German touring cars. The team currently competes in the World Touring Car Championship.
World Touring Car Championship
...
car of
Fredy Barth
Frédéric Nicolas "Fredy" Barth (born 5 December 1979 in Lucerne) is an auto racing driver from Switzerland. He currently drives in the World Touring Car Championship.
Racing career
Early years
Barth started out in karting before stepping up t ...
in the first few minutes of Q1 and breaking his suspension. He was allowed to start the races from the back and climbed up to sixth place at the end of race one. His car received further attention prior to the start of race two and he started from the pit lane and finished tenth.
Lada Sport (2014–2015)
At the
2013 FIA WTCC Race of China it was announced Huff would join
Lada Sport for the
2014 World Touring Car Championship season
The 2014 FIA World Touring Car Championship was a motor racing competition organised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) for Super 2000 Cars. It was the eleventh FIA World Touring Car Championship, and the tenth since the s ...
, having signed a two–year deal with the team.
Robert Huff was the driver who did not drive the dominating Citroën C-Elysée and who won the most numerous races in 2014 : two races, thanks to the ''inverted grid departure'' for the race 2 and a 60 kg lower ''compensation weight''. In spite of these advantages, he proved thus his level of driving performances.
Lada introduced a new car for the 2015 WTCC season : the Lada Vesta, developed mainly by the French company
Oreca
ORECA (Organisation Exploitation Compétition Automobiles) is a French racing team and race car constructor, founded in 1973 and run by Hugues de Chaunac, former team manager of F1 team AGS. Oreca has had success in many areas of motorsport ...
.
Racing record
Complete British Touring Car Championship results
(
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (ma ...
) (Races in bold indicate pole position – 1 point awarded in first race) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap – 1 point awarded all races) (
* signifies that driver lead race for at least one lap – 1 point given all races)
Complete World Touring Car Championship results
(
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (ma ...
) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)
†Did not finish the race, but was classified as he completed over 90% of the race distance.
Complete TCR International Series results
(
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (ma ...
) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)
Complete World Touring Car Cup results
(
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (ma ...
) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)
† Driver did not finish the race, but was classified as he completed over 90% of the race distance.
Complete STCC TCR Scandinavia Touring Car Championship results
(
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (ma ...
) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)
Complete TCR China Touring Car Championship results
(
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (ma ...
) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in ''italics'' indicate fastest lap)
Britcar 24 Hour results
References
External links
*
Profile at fiawtcc.com*
Robert Huff profileon Stapleford website where he was born and bred
{{DEFAULTSORT:Huff, Robert
1979 births
Living people
English racing drivers
British Formula Renault 2.0 drivers
World Touring Car Champions
World Touring Car Championship drivers
British Touring Car Championship drivers
TC 2000 Championship drivers
Formula Palmer Audi drivers
BRDC Gold Star winners
24 Hours of Daytona drivers
WeatherTech SportsCar Championship drivers
Porsche Carrera Cup GB drivers
Britcar 24-hour drivers
World Touring Car Cup drivers
Ginetta GT4 Supercup drivers
Renault UK Clio Cup drivers
Sébastien Loeb Racing drivers
W Racing Team drivers
Nürburgring 24 Hours drivers
24H Series drivers
TCR Asia Series drivers