Zoom Into the points zone, almost

The Munchi's Ford World Rally Team have completed their final event of the 2008 FIA World Rally Championship season with Federico Villagra/Jorge Pérez Companc finishing one spot outside a points finish in ninth place.

Unfortunately teammates Henning Solberg/Cato Menkerud had a rally to forget after retiring from the event when they had a small off Sunday morning. The duo slid into a ditch and were literally stuck in the mud, forcing them to retire.

Villagra got off to an unfortunate start when he lost over two and a half minutes with a broken drive shaft on stage 1, causing him to crawl through the next two stages with caution. Fortunately his Munchi's team of technicians did a fantastic job in repairing his car, changing both the drive shaft, and gearbox as a precaution, within the given service time limit.

Solberg's rally began slowly on Friday as he battled to find the right setup to accompany his driving style on these all-new Japanese stages. Some changes to soften the setup of his Munchi's Ford Focus RS WRC during service seemed to change the Norwegian's pace and this eventuated into a fastest time on stage 14 on Saturday morning.

Unfortunately the Munchi's man's mission turned sour on Saturday when he picked up a puncture on stage 17 after a heavy impact with a rut just 10 kilometres from the end of the test. After driving on the puncture for seven kilometres the car's rear left trailing arm then broke, forcing the Norwegian to retire from the day at the stage end.

Day Three was a similar story when 12 kilometres into the 27.76-kilometre Sikot 1 stage he misjudged the braking point for a medium left and careered straight into a ditch, in the treacherous conditions, becoming stuck and retiring from the event.

Rally Japan 2008 was a new location and new stages for everybody and this threw into the mix various factors which saw several top WRC crews fall by the wayside. The most significant factor was road condition which was amazingly rough and rutted thanks to torrential rain which hammered the Sapporo region, especially over Sunday's final leg of competition.

This threw up the test to the Pirelli Scorpion gravel tyre which withheld the demanding conditions as only a limited amount of punctures were reported over the course of the rally.

It has been a fine year for the Munchi's Ford World Rally Team which has seen some fantastic performances from Villagra, Solberg and team co-owner Luis Pérez Companc who made his final ever WRC appearance at Rally Finland behind the wheel of a Munchi's Focus RS.