Huff achieves a contentious 10th win at the Grand Prix Guia Race

British driver Rob Huff managed a contentious record 10th win at the Macau Grand Prix Guia Race after hitting the Chinese driver Ma Qing Hua at Mandarin Bend, taking the 2020 TCR China Championship champion out of the race.

The British driver lost first position to Ma on the first lap of the race and was doing everything to recover his first place when a small bump in the rear of his opponent sent the Teamworks Lynk & Co. driver against the barriers.

“You only need a little bit to have an accident. It’s unfortunate, the racing has been like that this year […] It’s not the way I would have liked to get it but I’ll take it,” Huff said after the race.

The crash led to a race suspension of almost 30 minutes, with another crash by Macau driver Ryan Wong and another accident involving the Audis of Yang Xi and Wu Yifan shortly after leading to the race to be suspended.

In the end, Zhang Zhi Qiang from Shell Teamwork Lynk & Co Motosport and Huff’s teammate in MG XPOWER, Andy Yan Cheuk Wai, completed the podium.

Following the end of the race, Huff was adamant that he did not intend to cause the cars with Ma, underlining that in “16 years racing in Macau” he never saw someone defend the way the Chinese driver did at that moment.

“I was much quicker out of the last corner, I had a really good sleep stream on him down into D2. For some reason, he sort of defended on the middle of the track going into the corner. I used the normal racing line and had a really good run through the corner and went to go to the inside of him. He sort of moved to the right and as he did that he slowed down and I just took avoiding action,” the MG XPOWER argued.

“We had the tiniest of touches but of course in a corner where you are doing 220km/h you only need a tiny little touch to have a big accident. I’m really sorry about this, it’s not how I wanted to race with him. I don’t really understand myself what happened”.

The Macau Grand Prix Organising Committee has informed MNA that no decision has been made yet on if the accident will be investigated, however, Huff was adamant that even if the incident was to be investigated the race result would remain unchanged.

“I don’t really care to be honest if you slow down not he exit of a corner. The problem you have everywhere you go is that the stewards have different ways of thinking and opinions.[…] It’s the way I overtook him yesterday and he knew that. I genuinely thought he must have had a problem because he slowed down so much at the exit,” Huff noted.

“I don’t know if he lifted the throttle to try and tighten the line to block me but I’m pinned to the floor at 220 km/h. If I brake I’m going to have a very big accident, si I will not take that chance”