MARTIN Rutherford finished his racing season in a creditable eighth position overall and vowed to come back quicker and luckier than ever next year.

The Citygate-backed speedster from Little Chalfont was at Norfolk's Snetterton circuit at the weekend for the VW Racing Cup's final two races of the 2005 season.

A ninth placed finish, achieved despite a qualifying disqualification, followed by a sixth place left Rutherford looking forward to doing it again next year.

He said: "I had a great time this weekend. Obviously we could have done without the qualifying disqualification, but it's been great fun coming from the back and the crowd certainly seem to prefer it that way.

"Rest assured if it's at all possible we'll be back next year with even more pace and possibly even some of this luck people kept telling me about."

Saturday's qualifying began well when Rutherford posted a time just six tenths of a second behind pole-man and championship leader Phillip House.

Unfortunately, post session scrutineering checks found his Beetle to be ten kilos below its mandatory minimum weight which had been raised following his successful outing at Brands Hatch.

This meant Rutherford's qualifying time was excluded and he was forced to start Sunday's race one at the back of the 28-car grid with an additional ten-second delay.

But he quickly moved through the field encountering little in the way of real resistance until he met the Vento of ninth placed Barrie Culley.

After several laps of being kept at bay, Rutherford moved to the inside of the ultra fast Riches corner and passed Culley with the two cars rubbing door handles at more than 100mph.

Despite pulling clear of Culley, the battle had caused both drivers to lose time on the rest of the field and Rutherford was unable climb any further, crossing the line in ninth.

Race two saw Rutherford starting from ninth on the grid but he quickly moved up into seventh and began to chase down TV presenter Jason Barlow's works Golf GTi.

Having lost the use of the Beetles power steering early in the encounter, Rutherford was literally muscling the car around the circuit in order to remain in contention.

His persistent close attention to the back of Barlow's car through the Russell chicane finally paid off as the journalist slid wide and afforded Rutherford a slim gap past him over the apex curb to cross the line in sixth.