Richard Burns gave Mitsubishi a World Championship double yesterday as the Rally of Britain's jinx on the season's top drivers claimed Carlos Sainz in heartbreaking circumstances.

Sainz was on the brink of a third drivers' title when the engine of his Toyota Corolla failed 500 metres from the end of the final stage of the last round of the series.

The Spaniard was unable to make it over the finishing line and was cruelly robbed of the points he needed to wrest the crown from Burns' team-mate Tommi Makinen.

It meant Mitsubishi emerged with both the drivers' and constructors' championships, as the victory by Burns guaranteed they ended the campaign as the leading manufacturers.

Burns completed the 28 stages with 3 mins 46.5 secs to spare over Finland's Juha Kankkunen, whose Belgian team-mate Bruno Thiry finished third to give Ford two podium positions in the final rally contested by the Escort model.

It represented a breakthrough into the big time for Burns, who dominated the event after Colin McRae's retirement on Monday. He was fastest on every stage of his final day's rallying for Mitsubishi, whom he now leaves to join Subaru.

Makinen crashed out on Sunday after skidding on a patch of oil which had been left by a car competing in the preceding Historic Rally, and he was annoyed that, as the first driver on the road, he had not been warned of it by the organisers.

Makinen's exit meant Sainz needed to finish only fourth to become champion, and that was the position he comfortably occupied heading into the last stage.

But just as he was planning how to celebrate, his car coasted to a halt. "It's impossible to put into words how I feel," said Sainz, whose co-driver Luis Moya was spotted banging the ground with his crash helmet in sheer despair after the incident.