Conrad Rautenbach ended his 2009 FIA World Rally Championship season on a high with a points-scoring finish on Rally GB.

The Citroen Junior Team driver enjoyed a trouble-free run through the final day’s four stages to end the event in eighth position. Despite collecting his fourth points finish of the season, the former FIA African Rally Champion talked of his frustration at dropping time earlier on the Cardiff-based event.

Never out of the top-10 fastest times through the final day, Conrad and his British co-driver Daniel Barritt were sixth on the penultimate test.

"Today was okay,” said Conrad at the finish. “It’s just frustrating that we lost time earlier in the rally. When you get to this point of an event and everything is working well and you know you could have been posting these times earlier, it’s tough. But, hey, this has been another typically hard Rally GB. The conditions out there, particularly on Saturday morning with all of the rain; that reaffirmed my belief that I’m not made for cold weather! It also provided some of the toughest driving conditions of the season. It’s been a great event, but pretty hard work as well.

“The final four stages today were fairly straightforward. We had a quite a lot of rain again, which meant the tyres were okay for all four stages – we had to use the same tyres all day. It’s good to get to the finish and obviously it’s been a very good event for the team, with Sebastien [Loeb] collecting the win and his sixth straight title.”

Loeb’s 54^th world rally win ensured he remained unbeaten in the drivers’ championship since 2003. Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen ended the Welsh event second – and only just ahead of Citroen’s Dani Sordo – following a last-minute drama for the Ford-driving Finn, whose bonnet flew up to obscure his vision in SS15.