DANIEL Barritt celebrated his second win in this year's Production Car World Rally Championship after guiding Fumio Nutahara to eighth overall on the Rally of Japan.

Barritt, from Hapton, and his Japanese driver, didn't put a foot wrong throughout the three-day event, which formed round five of the series.

The pair crossed the finish line of the final stage in Hokkaido with 27.4 seconds in hand over fellow Mitsubishi driver Gabriel Pozzo.

They made a good start to the event and led from the outset, until the combination of a puncture and a stunning time from rival Jari-Matti Latvala pushed them back to second, leaving the Finn in command.

Latvala continued to trade tenths of a second with Nutahara, permitting them back in to the lead briefly.

However, another puncture for Nutahara on stage eight resulted in the difference to Latvala being too large a deficit to make up on stage times alone.

But disaster struck for Latvala on the final day when he rolled his Subaru Impreza, leaving the Mitsubishi men to score their second PWRC victory of the season.

Nutahara also scored a WRC driver point en-route to eighth place. "The victory was very important to Fumio as the Rally Japan is home territory," said Daniel.

"But after suffering three punctures on the first day, we didn't know what was possible, and we certainly weren't sure about winning.

"Latvala was driving very well and fast. But we had to think about the championship and not risk the points. Although it wan't nice to see him crash out, it was good for us and for the championship - especially as we have three rallies to score on and he only has two."

The result leaves Barritt and Nutahara just 14 points behind championship leader Nasser Al-Attiyah, who opted not to start in Japan.

The next round is the Rally of Cyprus on 22-24 September.