Gwyndaf Evans missed out on taking the runners-up spot on the International Rally Yorkshire in the final test on Saturday when technical problems cost him over 2 minutes.

Evans ran in second place overall from the off and going into the 9.68 kilometre run through Cropton Forest was 10 seconds up on Mark Higgins.

However at the start of SS11 when he went to select third gear he suddenly found he couldn't select any gears at all. As the car coasted to a halt, the Welshman jumped out and opened the bonnet of his Lancer Evolution IX. After a few moments he discovered that a retaining pin had come out of a selector shaft and, after clipping it back on, finally got going.

That incident though cost him two places on the leaderboard and in the end he dropped behind both Mark and David Higgins.

Gwyndaf, who had an outside chance of the title coming into the event, was none-to-pleased, although fourth was sufficient to move him up to third in the 2007 Tesco 99 Octane MSA British Rally Championship standings, although he is now 20 points behind Mark, who stays top and 4 points behind Wilks, who took the win in the sister car, his third victory of the season.

"Rallying can be cruel sometimes. Everything was going so well and we were looking to score another 1-2 for the team until the last stage," said Evans. "Then to have something as simple as a retaining pin break is just so unlucky, especially as I felt we had earned second place.

"Fortunately it didn't take us long to get going again, so at least we were able to claim fourth place, which added to Guy's first is not a bad result for the team," he summed-up.