Double New Zealand Rally Champion Richard Mason has steered his Prodrive-built BNT Subaru into second place after Day One of this weekend’s Rally Nelson – August 21 – 22.
Mason and Co-driver wife Sara, finished just over a minute adrift of championship leader Dean Sumner, who won 5 of the 6 high-speed stages run in the forests southwest of the host city.
“We are feeling much happier tonight than we have for some time, as the BNT Subaru has done us proud today, particularly as a good chunk of our [time] deficit was the result of picking up a front puncture in stage 2,” said an upbeat Richard.
“We also spent the latter part of several stages catching up to the car in front which had an ongoing mechanical problem, so that compromised our [stage] times somewhat as well.
“However, overall, today showed that we are definitely moving in the right direction with the car setup and my new seating position and seat have proved to be positive changes as well.”
So this meant the BNT Mason Motorsport Team were able to spend tonight’s End-of-Day Service focused on making minor refinements rather than major changes and are looking forward to another strong showing on the six stages that lie in wait on Day Two.
“Our result today means we will run second on the road tomorrow, which should be a much better road position than today’s fifth, as there are a lot of loose rocks out there that are knocking the cars around quite a bit,” concluded Richard.
The first car is due to finish back at the WOW Centre, to complete the penultimate round of this year’s New Zealand Rally Championship, on Sunday afternoon at 2.30pm.
– Credit: www.chrissport.co.nz