Highworth's Shelly Taunt and co-driver Julie Murphy finished a respectable 44th overall out of the 165 crews entered in the Wyedean Forest Rally - their first outing of the year.

The GlobalExpense, OCM Capital Markets and Silverstone Rally School-supported Subaru Impreza dropped time on the first special stage of the day when their intercom failed to work as they set off from the start line, despite fitting a new battery just 20 minutes earlier.

Taunt was unable to hear directions with stages extremely slippy and tricky, so she backed off.

After replacing the battery, the crew were back in communication but, the pair were still struggling when, on the run out to stage two, the differential light on the dashboard was flickering.

"The car was running fantastically, but I could not get to grips with the handling and with the stage conditions changing almost every mile, we just seemed to lose valuable time and drop further and further down the field," said Taunt.

The problem was resolved when the pair returned to service but, with just three remaining stages they settled for a steady run to be sure of a finish as 41 crews had been forced to retire.

The duo enter the Bournemouth-based National Rally, The Rallye Sunseeker, this weekend.

It starts tomorrow evening, with two special stages through the Winter Gardens, re-starting on Saturday morning.

For more information on live results and spectator stages log onto www.shellytauntrallying.com or www.rallyesunseeker.co.uk.