The Englishman moved to Peugeot last winter after winning the world title with Subaru, but he has been overshadowed by team-mate Marcus Gronholm.

The Finn has won five rallies, and clinched the championship with two rallies to go.

Burns said: "There are a lot of positives from my first year with Peugeot.

"We've had good results earlier on, we haven't won a rally, but we've had good times and we have been fast enough to win quite a few rallies.

"We can take that away, but not an awful lot else."

Burns slipped down to fifth in the world championship table after crashing out of the Rally of Great Britain on the penultimate stage.

He blamed a lack of grip under braking, the same reason he gave for his crash on the event's second day, which cost him his chance of victory.

"I was caught out - the braking area was very, very slippery," Burns said.

"We were having a clean run up to that point in the stage and hadn't really had any dramas.

"But just in that place, braking from high speed down to a slow, second-gear corner, there just wasn't enough grip there.

"I was stuck down a bank with the nose near the road, but you would have had to physically lift the car out. It wouldn't come out of there."

He said missing out on second place in the championship "means nothing to us. I won't lose any sleep over it."