Masterton duo power to front

WHILE national rally champions Richard Mason and Sara Randall are slugging it out with the big guns at the front of the Hawke's Bay Rally this weekend, there'll be another, equally intense struggle going on further down the field.
Hawke's Bay counts as two rounds (Saturday and Sunday) of both the national championship and the Central Region championship. Peter and Kath Clendon, of Masterton, currently lead the Central Region Class E series, for pre-1992 4WD cars, after a stunning first in class and 5th overall in Taranaki tarmac rally at the beginning of April.
That result came in a Mitsubishi Galant VR4 which they have since sold to team chief mechanic Deane Shannahan.
The Clendons are now campaigning a more highly-developed VR4 they bought from Doug Breden. Peter Clendon rates the new car as 1 second per kilometre ? or four minutes per rally ? faster than the old car.
However they got off to an unhappy start, with gearbox failure and a DNF at the Tea Creek Road hillclimb in early May. There were two possible causes, one cheap and one expensive. Murphy had his way ... "it was the expensive one", a rueful Clendon said this week.
Since then the pair have done around 100km of testing and are delighted.
"The car is magic ? we haven't had to change any of the settings," Clendon said. "It's perfect."
The couple have signed up two new sponsors, Williams and Kettle and Clarke's Jewellers, plus regulars Heiniger (a Swiss shearing gear manufacturer), Derek Daniels of Wairere, Total Turbo and the Professionals, Ross and Quinn.
Mason and Randall, meanwhile, will be looking for a result after being forced out of round 2 of the China National Rally Championship when the fuel pump on the GT Tires Rally Team Subaru Impreza WRX failed.
Having won four of the five stages that made up the opening leg of the two-day event in the Guizhou province in south-western China, the pair started the second day 36.4 seconds ahead of former British Champion David Higgins.
However their fortunes changed almost immediately, when water was found to be in their fuel at the morning refuel point. Six minutes were lost rectifying the problem and the rally lead was gone.
The Masterton flyers still won the first stage of the day, but when a tyre delaminated in the next one, the time recovered was lost again. The final two stages proved to be a real struggle as the fuel pump began to fail and they were left stranded on the roadside, short of the rally finish.
The other two Kiwi crews in the 9 stage rally also both encountered incidents early on Day 2.
Aucklander Mark Tapper, (co-driven by Jeff Judd from Christchurch), led the 2WD class overnight in their 1600cc VW Polo, but retired with a mechanical problem 5km into the first stage of the second leg.
The other team, Palmerston North's Brian Green and Fleur Pedersen, had an altercation with a taxi on their way to the first stage that damaged the left front corner of their Mitsubishi Lancer Evo9. However they were able to continue and finished 10th overall.
The rally was decided on the last stage when Green's Wan Yu Rally Team teammate, Finnish star Jarkko Miettinen, overhauled Higgins to win by 12 seconds. Current Finnish Group N Champion Juha Salo finished third one minute further back. All three were driving Mitsubishi Lancer Evo9s.
Mason and Randall will now be looking to consolidate the 33 point lead they hold at the half way mark in this year's New Zealand series.