Richard Mason has had his share of "freaky" moments in a proud career that has seen him win the New Zealand Rally Championship on three occasions, including the past two years.
But perhaps the freakiest of all happened during first day action at the Rally of Whangarei over the weekend when, on the fifth stage, his steering wheel virtually came off while he was travelling at around 100km/h.
"It was hanging by a bare thread, a couple of nuts had come loose and there was nothing I could do but hit the brakes and hope I didn't crash, I couldn't steer at all," Mason said yesterday.
"Believe me, it was pretty scary.
"When you are going at that speed and things are basically out of your control, it's not a lot of fun."
Bad luck at the Whangarei rally is nothing new for Mason who, despite taking the lead on previous attempts, had never finished better than third, and his fright with the steering wheel - which took about 30s to put right once he had ground to a halt - was followed not long after by further hassles when the left front wheel bearing collapsed on stage six.
"We made what temporary repairs we could and managed to limp home over the last couple of stages.
"All in all, we were happy to get there in one piece."
Despite his troubles Mason who, as usual, had wife Sara in the co-driver's seat, still sat in third place in the NZRC event and that gave him confidence that if his new-look, lightweight BNT Subaru held together on the second day the runner-up spot behind runaway leader Hayden Paddon of Geraldine was very much within his grasp.
"That first day wasn't exactly out of the text book but that's what you get when you are intent on going flat out all the way, you have to accept that things can go wrong, it's just the way it is," Mason said. "It was a busy night for our support team, that's for sure.
"They did a magnificent job getting the car in top shape for the second day ... they were awesome."
Mason's second-day effort was superb and, while he was unable to make any inroads on the flying Paddon, he did claim the second position, therefore returning his best result ever in the Whangarei event.
"Obviously we would have liked to have won but he [Paddon] didn't have any car problems and was very fast over the two days, you can't take anything away from him," Mason said. "Second is never really good enough but, considering what we went through, we'll take it and move on."
The next event in the New Zealand Rally Championship is the Daybreaker Rally in Manawatu, starting on June 29.