DAVID Higgins took advantage of pre-race favourite Jonny Milner's roll to capture his first victory in the Kwik Fit Pirelli British Rally.

The double US champion brought his Hyundai Accent home two minutes before his nearest rival after ten gruelling stages between Gateshead and the Kielder Forest. The Isle of Man driver and co-driver Chris Wood recorded six fastest stages times between Friday night and Saturday evening to take maximum points and give notice of their intentions this season.

On the local front, Shildon's Barry Johnson came home fifth in his Subaru Impreza WRC, but there was major disappointment for the highly-rated Guy Wilks, the Darlington 23-year-old was forced to retire his Suzuki Ignis after a freak set of circumstances in the Super 1600 class.

For Higgins, however, it was all smiles as he toasted his win with champagne at the finish at Gateshead's Baltic Centre.

Milner's crash on Stage Four, going off after failing to negotiate a square left turn over a crest, left the man from North Yorkshire apparently close to tears and Higgins with little or no real competition out in front. "It's been a fantastic trouble-free event," he said afterwards. "It's always great to come back and win because it's the first time we have been back in the UK rallying for a while.

"Now we are going to just try and work really hard and get some more money together . . . obviously we have started off in a good position and hopefully that can give us some momentum to get some finance for the rest of the year."

Johnson, who came in behind Alistair Ginley (Subaru Impreza) and the Ford Focus' of Paul Bird, Steve Perez and Matthew Wilson, second, third and fourth respectively, said he was still getting used to his car, which, last year, was driven to the World Rally Championship title by Norwegian Petter Solberg.

"We have got a problem with the car's suspension," he said.

"I have been trying to get it set up but we are going to bite the bullet and (Prodrive) are going to give us some proper suspension off the works cars. That should solve my problems - I can't blame anything else then."

Wilks, meanwhile, was deeply frustrated by his retirement which came on Stage Two on Friday night after an incident on the opening run.

"It was a bit of a disaster really," he said."The car in front of us rolled. It was a really deceptive piece of road and he rolled into a quarry but the problem was that his lights were facing back almost directly into our path.

"We got blinded and we took the wrong line into the corner and hit a big rock which smashed a piece on the suspension. That put paid to us. The spectators did a fantastic job to get us back out and we carried on to the end of the stage with a smashed arm.

"We tried to fix it but unfortunately on Stage Two we ended up in a ditch because obviously we were only steering on one wheel, the other wheel wasn't doing too much work."

* Luke Hinds scored his first Green Flag British Touring Car Championship victory at Brands Hatch yesterday.

The Vauxhall driver won race two of a dramatic day's racing to open his account in the championship, while team-mate James Thompson and Honda's Matt Neal also scored wins.

Neal won the first race of the day after passing surprise leader Robert Huff , who earned his place in the Seat team last year by winning a competition.

Huff claimed easily the best result of his career with second while Tom Chilton, in a Honda, pushed past Thompson on the final corner to take third.

Hinds benefited from the reverse grid system in place for race two to win by a fraction of a second from Thompson, with reigning champion Yvan Muller third.

Neal did not start race two due to a car problem.