Daniel Barritt and Conrad Rautenbach were celebrating this week after scoring their best result of the season.

The pair collected their biggest points haul of the year by finishing an excellent fifth on the Acropolis Rally of Greece.

Barritt, from Barrowford, and his Citroen Junior Team driver spent the final day battling with Ford's Federico Villagra, with Rautenbach just missing out on equalling his best ever WRC result of fourth overall by 11.5 seconds.

Happy to have bagged four points on what had been one of the toughest ever Acropolis Rallies, but the Zimbabwean admitted he was frustrated to have come so close to making it five points and equalling that result from Argetina last season.

“I was pretty confident this morning, we went out ahead of Villagra and I thought we could hold that position. Unfortunately, things went a little bit wrong for us on the second stage – and once again, they weren’t really of our making,” he said.

“We’ve had some niggling problems which haven’t cost us lots of time, but they have prevented us from having a perfect, clean run. We went into the final stage ready to give it everything, but the tyres on the left-hand side of the car both delaminated which caused a half-spin near the end of the stage.

“On the positive side, we drove more consistently on this rally than any other this season.

"Usually, we have split times varying quite a lot, but here we seem to have managed to get into a good rhythm and stay there.

"Now we hope to build on this next time out in Poland.”