by Russell Atkins
Heading into his fifth successive campaign with RML – and fourth with Chevrolet in the World Touring Car Championship – Rob Huff is predicting a successful year ahead, after the squad comfortably accomplished all of its pre-season targets in 2007.
The 28-year-old wound up ninth in the final WTCC drivers' standings last year, just 14 points adrift of team-mate – and highest Chevy scorer in fourth – Nicola Larini, having triumphed
en route at Anderstorp in July, only his second series victory. He is confident there could well be a few more in 2008, should the outfit's impressive end-of-2007 form be carried over into the forthcoming season.
“The car is fantastic at the moment,” he enthused, speaking to
Crash.net. “RML have done such a fantastic job with it. It really was great to come away from Macau [final round of 2007] – with all three cars at maximum ballast – with a 1-2-3 from the weekend. That was a brilliant achievement for us, and exactly what we planned on doing. We achieved all of our goals last year.
“This year the aims will go higher. We've got a lot of winter development coming up with the car, so for sure it's going to be faster; we've set ourselves a goal of how much time we want to gain per lap over winter testing, and we almost doubled that last year. I think we've got a very strong chance of levelling what we want to do, if not going beyond it.
“The RML boys really are a dream team – there's not a lot they can't do. Three years ago we turned up at Monza and were four seconds a lap off the pace; last year we went there and all three of us were in the top five.”
Indeed, so much is he enjoying his current challenge with Chevrolet, Huff re-affirmed his commitment to both the team and the championship for the foreseeable future, hoping that before much longer Andy Priaulx may not be the only British driver with his name on the WTCC laurels.
