An emotional Craig Breen showed his true class by scoring his best result in a World Championship Rally at Rally Sweden.

The talented Waterford man brought his Citroen Total Abu Dhabi WRT Citroen C3 to a superb second place overall, the best performance ever by a driver from the Republic of Ireland in the WR.

Along with his British co-driver Scott Martin they finished  less than 20 seconds behind the Hyundai of Belgian World Championship leader Thierry Neuville at the end of three days of snow-covered stages.

Breen started his rally sensibly, holding eighth place on Thursday’s short shakedown stage, however, when the rally proper got under way on Friday, the Irishman took full advantage of conditions which improved as each car went through the stages, ending the day fourth.

On Saturday, he climbed to second spot, 22 seconds behind leader Neuville and ahead of the other two Hyundai drivers. 

On Sunday, Breen closed the gap on Neuville by three seconds, to record an historic podium placing – his first and the first for an Irishman.

Afterwards, Breen said "I'm absolutely on top of the world! It has been an incredible weekend. I have always really enjoyed this rally in the past, but I have to say that I surprised myself this weekend in that I was able to fight at the front throughout the race, without making any mistakes”.