DANIEL Barritt and Toshi Arai are playing catch-up as they resume their challenge for the Production World Rally Championship this weekend.

With crews picking six events from nine rounds, the pair haven’t contested a round of the PWRC since New Zealand at the start of May.

And Barritt, who lives in Barrowford, and his Japanese driver find themselves down in fifth place in the overall standings, 28 points behind leader Armindo Araujo.

Round six of the series, which runs alongside the WRC, is the ADAC Rallye Deutschland, which uses the roads through the Moselle vineyards and the notorious Baumholder tank range.

Acknowledged as a gravel specialist, the demanding tarmac roads will present a difficult challenge to 43-year-old Arai.

In order to gain more experience of asphalt with his Subaru Impreza, Barritt and Arai contested the Ypres Rally in June to gain more experience.

Although they retired on stage 10 with mechanical problems, it wasn’t about getting results.

“To be honest, the result wasn’t of major importance and we had no real aspirations of where we would have finished,” said Daniel.

“Toshi just wanted to get a good feeling with the car on asphalt and get some experience of driving on tarmac under his belt.

“He hasn’t done a tarmac rally for quite a while and it’s essential that we get a good result in Germany this weekend, and use it as a spingboard for the next round, which is on Toshi’s home ground in Japan.”

Barritt and Arai are seeded at car 28 in their Impreza, two places behind the Portugese Araujo.

Top six entries: 1: Sebastien Loeb/Daniel Elena (Citroen C4 WRC) 2: Sebastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Citroen C4 WRC) 3: Jari-Matti Latvala/Miikka Anttila (Ford Focus WRC) 4: Petter Solberg/Chris Patterson (Citroen C4 WRC) 5: Mikko Hirvonen/Jarmo Lehtinen (Ford Focus WRC) 6: Daniel Sordo/Diego Vallejo (Citroen C4 WRC)