KEY POINTS:
Top New Zealand rally driver Richard Mason reckons the one thing he's learned from the sport is to never give up - "because other people could be having even more dramas than you are".
Mason was the top Kiwi finisher in the World Championship Rally of NZ, despite
losing over four minutes during the Waikato-based event.
Mason and co-driver Sara Randall also finished third in the Production Car World Championship class and 15th overall in their Subaru Impreza WRX STI.
It was a Subaru one-two among the Kiwis, with Palmerston North's Sam Murray, leader of the national championship going into the final round at Nelson at the end of the month, finishing second. Mason and Randall made it a clean sweep for Subaru in the PCWRC class, where Toshi Arai and Otorohanga's Tony Sircombe won from Irishman Niall McShea.
Mason started the final day 23 seconds behind Murray in the battle for top New Zealand driver honours and soon hauled in the deficit.
Another display of aggressive driving also had him leap-frogging international drivers in the production class standings, from seventh place on Saturday.
"It was great to be the top Kiwi home again," said Mason. "Getting third in PWRC after the trouble we've had was a bonus."
Mason lost almost three minutes when he had to stop and change a tyre in the rally's longest stage on Friday and, in Saturday's last stage, he was forced to do 16km with only first and second gear.
Whangarei schoolgirl Kirsty Nelson showed remarkable maturity to finish the event in sixth place among the local drivers in her older model Impreza WRX STI.
Dunedin's Emma Gilmour finished 33rd overall after having been placed as high as 24th. She ended up third in the race for Kiwi honours and was running eighth in the PWRC category before a steering problem intervened. Back in business after crashing at Whangarei a few months ago, she started strongly, recording second-fastest production class time through the first part of the rally's opening stage on the Friday.
But niggling problems blunted her pace. The first was a broken engine mount. "The engine was moving about which, in turn, made the car's handling a little unpredictable," said Gilmour. She started Saturday's secondrd overall, eighth in the PWRC field and fifth in the national championship division but ran into mo0re problems. "I almost crashed on the second corner of the first stage, the car didn't turn in as it should have," she said.
"I wound on more lock and, suddenly, the car turned in massively."
Gilmour completed the stage but found the car's front differential and steering rack were broken, probably having been damaged by the engine moving about the day before.
Gilmour withdrew and had to take a 10-minute penalty, dropping her to 39th overall. She rejoined the third leg and worked up to 33rd overall and 13th of 19 finishers in the PWRC field.