Martin Laverty came through to take the honours in the inaugural Citroen C2-R2 Cup on the Wales Rally GB at the weekend.

Laverty took maximum points on both round six and seven and despite a brief excursion into a ditch in the atrocious conditions, he stuck to his game plan of to finish first, first you must finish.

“I've been rallying for a long time and I've never done an event in worse conditions,” said the Northern Irish veteran, who is oldest competitor in the 2007 BRC. “If you'd have suggested at the start of the year that we would win the Championship like this I wouldn't have believed you.”

Second in the points meanwhile with a pair of runner up spots was a delighted Martin Roberts, who was another with the long game in mind.

His results more than made up for missing the opening round in April, he finished just six points behind Laverty in second.

“The most serious problems we had all rally were a slow puncture and losing the door mirror glass,” he noted at the finish.

Welshman Jason Pritchard, who had led for much of the season, had to settle for P3 in the standings. He took a pair of third places, despite having to re-start under the SupeRally on both days 2 and 3. However although he ended the year with the same amount of points as Roberts, he lost out on the tie break.

"We have had a mixed and disappointing season with some good results at the start of the year, but we have been plagued with mechanical problems and this rally has been typical of our year,” he stated.

“Friday and Saturday were mechanically flawed and today has been great with our times reflecting the pace we were at. We were catching several cars on each stage and the car ran well today. The rally certainly has been an experience and we would have enjoyed it much more had we completed more of the stages. Reliability has cost us the championship.”

George Thomas also had a rough weekend and his two fourth places were only sufficient to give him fourth in the series, which was disappointing considering he took two wins early on.

The run of bad luck continued for the final Rally GB C2-R2 entrant Kazutomo Kusama, who retired on Friday's second stage with a blown engine. He was unable to repair the fault and could not rejoin for days 2 and 3.