Rallying: West wins despite gear woes

Yesterday's win, after 13 high-speed stages over two days, was Chris West's third success at Dunedin, as he also won the event in 2000.

Chris West has won the Rally of Otago, the second round of the national championship, despite driving 20km with a broken gear lever on the penultimate stage.

With co-driver Gary Cowan, West in the Subaru Rally Team New Zealand Impreza WRX STI, finished 26.3s in front of Richard Mason in another Impreza WRX after the 13 high-speed stages run over the two days.

The broken gear lever may well have cost West maximum national championship points on the second heat of the event run yesterday, which Mason won by 3.6s.

"We'll never know how much difference it made," said West. "We had to do about 20km just using the stump of the gearshift."

Despite the handicap, West set the fastest time on the stage, beating Mason by 9.2s over the 42km.

Ironically it was on the same stage of last year's event that West also suffered a broken gear lever although he still went on to win the event.

"It's all ifs and buts," he said. "If I hadn't chosen the wrong tyres for the middle set of stages we wouldn't have lost so much time."

The result has elevated West to second in the national championship, just one point behind Mark Tapper, after starting the weekend in fourth overall and 27 points adrift.

"We've certainly got right back into contention in the championship, which was the main aim of the weekend," said West. "But it would've been nice to get those extra five points for winning today's heat as well."

Earlier West had dropped small amounts of time to Mason on the day's first five stages and was 16.2s behind going into the 42km sixth stage in the Berwick Forest.

"We lost a bit of time on the black ice on the first two stages," said West. "It got pretty scary when the car started sliding around when we were flat out in sixth gear."

For the next three stages West chose the narrower of his two choices of tyre.

On those three stages Mason extended his advantage. The Subaru Rally Team New Zealand mechanics fitted the wider tyres for the final forest stage, which appeared to be the right decision as West clawed back 9.2s of his deficit.

Then on the final tarmac stage around Dunedin's wharf area, West was another three seconds faster than Mason, to fall just 3.6s short of winning the heat.

"The car's been great all weekend," said West. "It was really magic in the wet conditions on Saturday and once we made the correct tyre choice today it worked very well too."

Yesterday's win was West's third success at Dunedin, as he also won the event in 2000.

Now the the series heads to the new event of the championships, the Masterton-based Wairarapa Rally, to be held over Queen's Birthday weekend.

National standings

1 Mark Tapper 92pts
2 Chris West 91
3 Emma Gilmour 85
4 Richard Mason 59
5 Brett Martin 53

- NZPA