Mason has no complaints about second place finish

Richard Mason was making no excuses for his second placing behind Hayden Paddon in the Rally of Nelson over the weekend.
Mason, from Masterton, was behind the wheel of a Subaru Impreza WRX owned by BNT Mason Motorsport Team member Murray Huband rather than his trademark bright yellow BNT Subaru .
The latter remained across the Tasman after being driven by Mason to second place in the production world rally championship category at Rally Australia where it will be the subject of suspension development work before returning home.
Mason is fulsome in his praise of the work done by Huband in converting his Subaru WRX from a road car to a rally car and said it handled "brilliantly" in Nelson.
"Obviously it was a bit strange being in a different car which didn't have quite the same specifications but, hey, everything went well and we are certainly not complaining," Mason said. "In fact, if we were being honest we would probably say we went better than we expected.We actually won a couple of stages and that was a surprise!".
Mason didn't only have a new car for the Nelson rally he had a change in co-driver too, with wife Sara giving way to brother-in-law Hamish Fenemor who hadn't competed alongside Mason for something like four years.
Indeed it was Fenemor who was co-driver when Mason won the first of his New Zealand rally championship events in Hawke's Bay in 2002.
Mason said the decision to have Fenemor replace Sara was done to both reward him for the excellent work he does behind the scenes and to give him valuable hands on experience in case he was needed to fill the position again at future rallies.
"He did a great job.....he was possibly a little bit rusty for the first couple of stages but from then on it was just like old times,"Mason said of Fenemor.
The Nelson event was the last in the 2009 New Zealand rally championship and with Paddon already being assured of first place the prime objective for Mason and Fenemor was to move from third to second on the points list., a feat which could only be achieved by them finishing ahead of a confident Emma Gilmour.
"She {Gilmour) wasn't shy at saying she was going to beat us so, quite frankly, we were rapt to kick her arse," Mason said. "She made a few costly mistakes on the first day and never really got close enough to worry us, it was nice to take her down a peg or two.".
Mason's 262pts gave him second behind Paddon (348pts) for the New Zealand title with Gilmour finishing third on 252pts.
It was a campaign of seconds for the Mason family with Sara also placing there in the co-drivers championship.