TCR: Huff impressed with Honda machinery

Former World Touring Car champion Rob Huff has praised the new TCR concept after starring on his race debut in the finale of the category's inaugural international series in Macau.

With the WTCC no longer visiting Macau, the factory Lada driver switched tin-top codes in order to try to add to his tally of seven wins at the track, and scored his eighth victory there in last weekend's qualification race with West Coast Racing's Honda Civic TCR.

Huff was then eliminated from the Macau Guia finale when he collided with Jordi Gene seconds after the start, triggering a pile-up. His pole position time was seven seconds slower than last year's pacesetting WTCC time, set by Citroen's Jose Maria Lopez. But it was less than three seconds slower than Yvan Muller's polewinning time in his Chevrolet in 2013, the last year of the previous-spec TC2 cars.

"The TCR cars are good," said Huff. "They achieve their speed in a slightly different way. These cars are quicker through the corners and have more aero than the old TC2, but they're 30-40hp shy on power – in the Chevrolet [in which Huff won the WTCC crown] we did 165mph on the straight, while in this it's 155.

"For the price of the cars [$75,000-$95,000, including engine] it's amazing what they've managed to achieve, even if you can tell it's a road car converted rather than a race car built from the ground up."

Huff raced the old Step 1 version of the Civic in Macau, the first time he had driven this car; he tested the JAS Engineering-built Step 2 version in Italy for two days, before West Coast's star driver Gianni Morbidelli gave the new machine its first competition outings at Thai track Buriram and in Macau.

The TCR concept continues to grow, with new European series being added in Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries for next year, as well as a TCR European Series that will piggyback one race each from several regional and national championships.

Originally on Autosport.com