Dave Holder is arriving back in Tauranga today a happy man after taking his first win in the Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship at the International Rally of Whangarei.

Speaking to SunLive this morning about his win on the weekend, Dave says: 'This is my first win full-stop actually”.

Tauranga's Dave Holder racing his Stadium Finance Mitsubishi to victory in the International Rally of Whangarei. Photo: Jason Byrne/Alittlebitsideways.co.nz

'We've been close a couple of times – and it's also my co-driver Jason Farmer's first win and he's been a co-driver at top level for 23 years,” says the Mount Maunganui rally driver.

Dave and Jason drove their Stadium Finance Mitsubishi to victory, ending with a 1 minute and 29.6 second lead over Emma Gilmour and Anthony McLoughlin's Vantage Suzuki Swift and the LJ Hooker Mitsubishi of Dylan Turner and Rob Scott.

And while World Rally Championship star Hayden Paddon and co-driver John Kennard's car was the fastest on day 2 – taking the day by more than three minutes in his Hyundai i20 – mechanical dramas on Saturday meant he withdrew from the competition and his points yesterday did not count.

Dave says his team is 'obviously really happy” but notes the weekend was a really interesting round of the New Zealand Rally Championship – which he now leads by 20 points ahead of Hayden Paddon.

'In stage two on Day 1, we caught a slower competitor early in the piece and dropped quite a lot of time – and to come back from that was quite good.”

Dave says his first stage on Day 1 was 'fairly solid” but in stage two the trouble started when his car caught a lot of dust mid-stage 'and it got worse and worse”.

'Eventually we caught up to the competitor in front of us, who was also stuck behind someone else – so it ended up being the three of us trailing along in the dust trying to pass this one guy.

'It proved to be interesting – you've got to try and keep your nerve and not get angry.

'At one point, myself and fellow competitor Ben Hunt were trying to pass this one guy on the same corner – so it was like rallycross all over again.

'Unfortunately, we dropped 40-50 seconds because of that – that's a lot of time in rallying to get back – but we just decided to focus on what we were doing and just crack on,” says Dave.

'And I managed to pull back a lot of time and win day 1 by just over one minute, which was good.”

Despite having this time as a head-start for day 2, Dave says his team just re-set and aimed to do a consistent run.

'We did that and increased our lead by about 20 seconds.”

Dave says while he won the rally he wasn't faster than Hayden on Day 2, but is very happy the WRC star was there to give him pointers.

'Having Hayden there was really cool – we were following him on the road on day 2.

'And before stages we were talking to him and he'd drop us little bits of advice like ‘watch out for the wet tarmac' – just little things you learn as you go and it was good to get that from the man of the moment really.”

Dave says another interesting link to Hayden is winning the weekend's rally in Whangarei while driving the WRC star's former Mitisibishi car.

'Nine years ago at that same rally Hayden won his first rally in the car we were driving on the weekend,” says Dave.

'It all fits in quite well with being his protégé – so it's quite good.”

Dave's team focus this year is on winning the New Zealand Rally Championship with three out of five rounds left.

'We've got a few hurdles in the fact we haven't really got all of the budget together to get to all rounds.”

'In fact, we were really lucky to have a lot of people get on-board for us to get to Whangarei.”

So in typical Dave Holder-fashion he's not taking anything for granted.

'You take the points when you can get them – and we will take them from this weekend.”

The championship now heads to Christchurch for Rally Canterbury on June 4-5.

Results – 2016 NZRC Round 2 – Rally Whangarei:

2016 Brian Green Property Group NZ Rally Championship standings after round two of five:

David Holder 64 points

Hayden Paddon 44

Richard Baddock 36

Ben Hunt 33

Marcus Van Klink 31

Emma Gilmour 28