Darren Gass and co-driver Neil Shanks scored their second straight fifth place in the 2007 Tesco 99 Octane MSA British Rally Championship at the weekend on the Rally Isle of Man.

In doing so, the 19-year-old moved within seven points of triple champion Mark Higgins and was nominated as the third Pirelli Star Driver finalist.

The award means he will go into a shoot out with five other nominees for the inaugural Pirelli Star Driver prize, a fully funded drive in the 2008 British Rally Championship.

However the result and subsequent selection was not without its dramas. They were bettered by fellow C2 driver Conrad Rautenbach on the first stage by just 1.4 seconds but pulled ahead by 0.6 of a second on the next stage. The opening spectator special through Castletown was re-run as stages three and four and by the overnight halt Gass lay sixth, still less than two seconds adrift of the Zimbabwean class leader.

With the prospect of rain all the drivers gambled on their tyre choice being correct and the youngster chose well for Friday's opening 7.38 mile stage. Gass extended the tiny third of a second advantage to two thirds by the next stage, but he lost the advantage when the handbrake failed to slow the car on the first run through Ballig.

“We hadn't used the handbrake until that point,” he explained, “so it was a bit of a surprise when it didn't work and we ended up hitting a bale. It was superficial damage but we dropped over eight seconds to Conrad.”

Any threat from Stefan Davis faded on the same stage when he retired, only continuing on Saturday using the SupeRally rules. This left the way clear for a straight fight with Rautenbach, but stage twelve was about to prove their worst. A front puncture on a very fast section caused them to stop to change the tyre.

“It went down almost immediately,” said Shanks, “but we managed to change it really quickly and only lost two minutes twenty seconds. We got plenty of practice in Belgium last month so we both knew exactly what to do.”

The puncture left them seventh BRC crew overnight, after the final test was cancelled due to the discovery of an unexploded WW2 bomb. More critically they dropped out of contention for the class win, or so they believed.