Richard Mason has yet to discover the reason for the gearbox failure which cost him victory in the third round of the New Zealand Rally Championship, the Daybreaker Rally, in the Manawatu on Saturday.
Two minutes ahead of his nearest rival and with just 4km to go on theninth and final special stage, Mason's Subaru STI was travelling at between 130km/h and 140km/h when the lever on the gearbox jammed and there was nothing the Masterton ace could do to stop the car from "coasting" to a halt.
"There were absolutely no warning signs, we were going along fine and then all of a sudden this came out of the blue," Mason said. "One minute we have everything under control and the next it's all turned to custard."
Mason said the immediate reaction was to find a quick fix and get the car back on the road but it didn't take long for him, and co-driver wife Sara, to realise that wasn't going to happen.
"You do feel frustrated but when you have been rallying for as long as us you also understand that these sort of things can happen.
"You get over the disappointment quite quickly and start thinking about the next race. Dwelling on what might have been never gets you anywhere, does it?"
Mason said the cause of the lever jamming would only be found once the gearbox was pulled to pieces by his support crew, and he wasn't sure when that would happen.
"It is a new gearbox brought in from overseas and it's impossible to say what went wrong without pulling it apart."
His "no finish" on Saturday demoted Mason from second to third on the NZRC points list - 26 points behind leader Haydon Paddon - but with the rules allowing for drivers to drop their worst result when the overall standings are decided this may only be a "minor hiccup" towards Mason's chances of winning what would be his third successive national title.
"Right now it's definitely not the end of the world as far as our title hopes are concerned. It's just a matter of making everything count from now on," Mason said.
The fourth round of the NZRC will be staged in Canterbury in about six weeks.
