Conrad Rautenbach endured mixed fortunes through today's second day of Rally GB – the final round of this year’s World Rally Championship.

The former FIA African Rally Champion lost his place in the points to the resurgent flyinf Finn Jari-Matti Latvala in his factory Ford Focus RS WRC 09. But, despite another day full of shocking conditions, Conrad remained resolute on the verge of points in ninth place in his Citroen Junior Team C4 WRC.

After enjoying occasional sunshine through the opening day, the weather finally went Welsh today. It poured and poured down through the opening Rhondda test. The wipers on Conrad’s C4 WRC struggled valiantly, but eventually the motor overheated and wilted.

“The wipers slowed down,” said Conrad. “It wasn’t the best – the rain was so hard, worse than anything I’d seen before. It was unbelievable.”

Worse was to come when the Citroen’s anti-stall system malfunctioned later in the stage and when he tugged the handbrake to slide the car through another sodden hairpin, the fire went out on the C4. The car fired up again, but it happened again in the morning’s final test.

The afternoon improved – along with the weather – and Conrad’s split times improved with perfect vision and an engine which ran perfectly all of the time.

“The team fixed the anti-stall in service,” explained Conrad. “I didn’t like that first stage, though. There were loads of rocks around and it was quite rough. The second two were better, I enjoyed them more. Unfortunately, after the first stage, I’d changed some clicks on the dampers to make the car harder and this didn’t work for Crychan – then we didn’t have time to change it before Halfway, so the car was compromised a little bit in there as well.”

Today’s six stages appear to have played a decisive hand in the direction of this year’s World Rally Championship, with Conrad’s fellow Citroen driver Sebastien Loeb moving 30 seconds clear of his chief title rival Mikko Hirvonen with just one day, one loop and four stages remaining in the season.