Masons power to huge win

UNITED EFFORT: Service crew work hard to keep the Masons' Subaru Impreza up to scratch during the Otago rally.

Richard Mason is not the type to wax lyrical about his performances.

So it was pretty much what was expected when Mason labelled the crushing win secured by him and his co-driver, wife Sara, in the second round of the New Zealand Rally Championship, the DriveSouth Rally of Otago, over the weekend as being "pretty good".

In fact it was a lot more than that. For starters their massive time advantage of 4min 11.5s over second placegetter David Holder, of Mount Maunganui, was the largest winning gap between first and second in any NZRC event for at least 10 years and, secondly, they would almost certainly have won every one of the 15 stages but for puncturing on Sunday's longest stage, the 12th.

Mason wasn't surprised by this mishap during the 40km Terrace Range stage as there were a "hell of a lot" of sharp rocks to avoid and punctures were always a possibility.

"We knew what could happen and did our best to stay out of trouble but ... well, we obviously didn't manage it."

The rupture of the front tyre on their Subaru Impreza WRX STI could have been costly in a close contest as the change of tyre took almost three minutes to make but with their closest rival at that point, Emma Gilmour, being eliminated by a failed fuel pump on the same stage the Masterton duo's 15th placing was still good enough for them to maintain a handy overall advantage.

"Obviously it was disappointing not to win the stage but, hey, it's the sort of thing which can occur in this sport, and you just have to grin and bear it," Mason said. "At least it was fixable ... it could have been a lot worse."

Now four times a winner of the Otago rally, Mason believes the key to his latest success was a game plan that focused on putting the pressure on their opposition from the word go without taking any undue risks.

"Our support crew did a magnificent job, the car handled superbly and we just had to concentrate on what we had to do. It pretty much all went according to plan."

Mason's win sees him extend his championship lead to 45 points over Matt Summerfield. Mason has 84 and Summerfield 39, followed by Lance Williams 31, David Holder 21 and Matt Jenson 18.

The remaining NZRC events are the Rally of Canterbury on June 1, the Rally of Wairarapa on June 28, the Rally of Whitianga on August 23 and the Daybreaker Rally of Manawatu on September 27.