Tauranga's David Holder and co-driver Jason Farmer can cruise into the Goldrush Rally Coromandel next month because they've already won the 2016 New Zealand Rally Championship crown with one round to spare.

But the drive is now to get David to some overseas events during 2017 – as well as more experience on the road by contesting his new rally crown he won last weekend.

David Holder and co-driver Jason Farmer celebrate their big win with the team. Photo: Scott Johnson.

The one-day Rally Gisborne last Saturday was round four of five in the Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship, which David went into with a six-point lead.

David, driving his Stadium Finance-sponsored Mitsubishi Evo 8, his mentor Hayden Paddon drove to rookie and junior national rally titles in 2006, won the first power round.

This first power round offered an extra five championship points – 'so that was a focus for us – and we went out and kind of thrashed everyone,” says David.

'Then we did the same on the next two stages – and got ourselves a one-minute-and-a-half lead over the rest of the field.”

Plus main rival Emma Gilmour experienced mechanical woes, taking her out of contention, and an off-road incident for defending NZRC champion Ben Hunt saw things go their way.

'I said to Jason at about lunchtime ‘This is going pretty well so far – imagine if the right people fell off the road and we got the championship as well'. We sort of laughed about it.”

But at the final service, with one lap to go, Dave noticed 'the TV guys started putting cameras in my car – facing me on the dash and things like that”.

'I thought this was strange. I talked to Jason and he let me know if we finished the stage we'd win the championship – so it was a pretty cautious drive to the end.”

David totalled 1 hour 44 minutes 3.6 seconds for the 150km of stages to finish one minute and 25 seconds ahead of Dylan Turner and Rob Scott in a Mitsubishi Evo 9.

David says it was dramatic finish to a dramatic championship, where he and Jason came third at the season-opener in Otago behind Hayden Paddon and Ben Hunt.

Then they celebrated their first NZRC victory in Round two, the Whangarei rally. And despite going into Round three in Canterbury with a comfortable points lead over Gilmour and Hunt, they crashed out and Gilmour won the round.

But David's quick to share the victory with those close to him. 'If I have one word to describe the feeling [of winning] it would be ‘grateful' to be honest.

'Because although on the day it comes down to what I do, on the whole it's about the team behind me and the sponsors – those who have been behind me for the last four years.

'So it's really not my win but all of theirs.”

David's now looking forward to the Coromandel rally on August 20, where he'll do some community involvement events with sponsor Stadium Finance off-road. 'And I guess I'm still in a learning stage.

'So that will be Coromandel in a nutshell – hopefully we can win the last round and finish the championship nicely.”

And what about 2017? 'Basically, I want to go overseas and compete internationally and make a career out of it – that's the end goal.

'There are a few hurdles and one of them is experience – and NZ is the cheapest place to get experience.

'So that's where the national championship comes in again for us. Obviously we want to win it again.

'But the focus for me next year is to find some opportunities for me to drive in one or two events overseas.

'So we're working on that now – and now we've won the championship it makes the CV look a bit better.”