British driver Rob Huff has won his maiden World Touring Car Championship title
British driver Rob Huff won his maiden World Touring Car Championship title despite hitting a wall in Macau.
Last Updated: 18/12/12 4:49pm
Huff sustained damage to his car in race one when he hit a wall and was forced to retire just five laps from the end, with Yvan Muller going on to win ahead of Alain Menu.
It meant that should Menu triumph in race two, Huff had to finish at least sixth to take the overall title and one place higher were Muller to win.
Menu won in 35 minutes 36.096 seconds, 0.32secs ahead of Huff with Muller third a further 0.569secs adrift, for a Chevrolet clean sweep in what is their WTCC farewell.
Huff told fiawtcc.com: "I'm pretty speechless. I think it will take quite a while to sink in, if it will ever do.
"It has been an emotional weekend and an amazing day, especially considering that I have nearly spoiled everything with my incident in the first race.
"What a mistake from me it was! But we had a happy ending. So we will ignore that.
"I have to say thank you to the RML team, because they all jumped to my car when I pitted. There was quite a lot of damage to be fixed before the second race. They did a great job and for the second race my car was perfect."
He added: "Obviously in between the races I was a bit tense, but still I had a good margin of points and I knew that, even if Yvan or Alain were going to win the races, all I needed to do was to finish no lower than sixth.
"After the first safety car I was fifth behind Yvan, so it was just a matter of trying to stay focused and not to make any other mistakes.
"The team made a gamble on me when they picked me up back in 2005 and I hope that today I have shown they had made the right decision."
