Masons dominate season

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN: Richard and Sara Mason in action at the Daybreaker.

Masterton husband-and-wife duo Richard and Sara Mason completed a memorable 2014 New Zealand Rally Championship season with a clear-cut win in the GoPro Daybreaker Rally of Manawatu on Saturday.

It was the sixth and final race of this year's series and it was the Masons' fifth win, their only defeat coming when they were forced out of the fifth round in Coromandel with a broken suspension when well in front.

Richard Mason had a record breaking fifth national championship in the bag before the Daybreaker but that success made Sara Mason the most successful co-driver in the history of the event. She went into the Daybreaker equal first with Bob Haldane on 24 and now has 25 with the prospect of improving that figure substantially in the years ahead.

The Manawatu rally, which started and finished in Palmerston North, was a challenging finale to the 2014 championship with a 3.50am start and two early morning stages before daybreak providing a real challenge for teams.

The Masons in their BNT Subaru won seven of the 11 stages raced over 196km of fast flowing gravel competition in the Manawatu and Taihape districts and finished with a winning margin of 42.6s over Nelson's Ben Hunt, who had Tony Rawstorn as his co-driver. David Holder of Tauranga was third.

For Richard and Sara Mason it was a case of "catch me if you can.". They started with a dominant first stage victory and were never headed although it wasn't all plain sailing..

What Richard himself admitted to being a "rookie error" occurred on a touring stage when the bonnet pins were not secured correctly.The end result was a broken windscreen but that did not stop them from winning the first seven stages of the event and building a comfortable lead.

There was also the problem of a broken left rear shock absorber over the latter stages with Richard managing to make some adjustments to the rear end and not losing too much time as a consequence.

Nothing reflects better the dominance of the Masons in the 2014 NZRC than the final points list.

They finished with 174pts.

Hunt was second on 95pts with Holder third on 94pts.

Then came Matt Summerfield 71 and Lance Williams 57.