Six days after the third round of the Touring Car World Cup at the Nürburgring, Rob Huff and Mehdi Bennani arrived at the Zandvoort circuit in the Netherlands this weekend to tackle, among others, the legendary Tarzan corner at the wheel of their Sébastien Loeb Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI TCRs.
Rob Huff was on the pace straight away and despite cloudy conditions posted the fifth-best time in the first free practice session while Mehdi Bennani was fourteenth quickest. In the second session, the two Sébastien Loeb Racing drivers worked on race setups and finished seventh and 14th respectively.
After a stunning qualifying performance Huff set the benchmark time and came out on top giving him the DHL pole position award for race 1. Bennani continued to improve and moved up to eleventh in a top-class field comprising 27 cars.
Watched by Max Verstappen, the man behind this meeting which attracted a huge crowd, the English driver fell back to third place as he was the victim of an overlong starting procedure that wasn’t to his clutch’s liking. Although the race was interrupted by a red flag and a safety car deployment, he managed to hang on to third till the chequered flag scoring his first podium finish at Zandvoort. Bennani, increasingly at home in his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR, ended the first race in an excellent eighth place despite the various upsets.
In qualifying for races 2 and 3, Huff continued to set a searing pace in his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR and clinched another front row position while his team-mate continued his progress with seventh place, synonymous of fourth spot on the reversed grid for race 2. This gave him the chance of aiming for a top-3 finish on a circuit where overtaking is generally difficult.
Bennani spent a long time battling to hold on to his position in race 2 and gave nothing away seeing the flag in an encouraging fifth spot. His team-mate, Huff, got snarled up in traffic and came home seventh after starting ninth on the reversed grid.
In the late afternoon, the English driver in the Sébastien Loeb Racing team had but a single aim in race 3 – to score the maximum number of points. He snatched second place in his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR where he stayed throughout the 15-lap heat sealing his second podium finish at the same meeting! Bennani, who was pushing harder and harder, was locked in battle up to the very last lap and saw the flag in eighth place adding more points to his tally.
After the Dutch weekend Huff has moved up into the top 3 in the drivers’ ratings with 130 points while Bennani is lying eleventh with 63 points. Sébastien Loeb Racing is still in fourth place with 207 points.
“It was a fabulous weekend and a very important one for us as we scored big points towards the championship! The car’s really fantastic and we’re starting to understand it better and better. I’d really like to offer my sincere thanks to the whole team for the huge amount of work they’ve put in, in particular after the crash at the Nürburging less than a week before Zandvoort. We’re improving as the rounds unfold and it bodes well for the next race in Portugal.” Rob Huff.
“Thanks to the precious help of Sébastien Loeb Racing I was able to improve throughout the weekend and I feel more and more at home behind the wheel of the Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR. I’m happy to have been able to get up among the front-runners at the end of the meeting as we found more performance. It was a particularly intense round so it was all the more agreeable to score big points in these conditions. The pace is pretty hot and we’re continuing to consolidate our gains and make progress: we’re building something that’s very promising for the rest of the season.” Mehdi Bennani.
“It’s been a very positive weekend and we’re very happy with the job our two drivers have done. Pole position, front row and two podium finishes for Rob as well as Mehdi’s striking improvement are all very encouraging. Now all we have to do is to score more points at Vila Real and continue to move up the classification. Here in Zandvoort it was also very pleasant to share the weekend with the Porsche Carrera Cup France as we were able to closely follow another category in which the team is racing. It was a great mutual experience shared with all the team members.” Benjamin Simard, the engineer in charge of the WTCR programme at Sébastien Loeb Racing.
Next round of the 2018 FIA WTCR for Sébastien Loeb Racing: Vila Real in Portugal 23-24 June 2018.