David Higgins and Craig Drew got their 2014 Rally America championship campaign off to a cracking start with victory on last weekend's Sno-Drift Rally, in conditions more akin to the Artic rally in Finland.

The reigning champions started favourites in a new updated Team Subaru USA Impreza, but found temperatures dropping to -26 with stages compacted with snow and ice.

With Ken Block missing the opening round, it was left to old sparring partner Antione Le'Estage to take the fight to Higgins, in his Lancer Evo 10, the Canadian setting fastest times on a few stages during day one, as Higgins hit problems with the new car with overheating and anti lag problems, and to make things worse they had to do seven miles of Stage 4 with a flapping bonnet.

It was then decided by the team to do an overnight engine change, with the duo to book out of the main control at 7.30am Saturday morning, the Subaru mechanics completed the monumental task by 5am in freezing conditions.

But day two Le'Estage had no answer to Higgins pace in such treacherous conditions, leaving the duo victorious in the end by nearly two minutes from Le'Estage.

"Great start to the year, with the new car well pleased with the new updates we've added," said Drew. "We had a few niggling problems but credit to the team, who worked in those freezing conditions to get us back out today. It was so cold, really awful conditions."

Last weekend also saw two local crews head for Brean Leisure park for the Brean Stages, the two day event attracted a capacity 100 car entry.

Ian Archer and Tom Marrott debuted a brand new Escort RS, although they finished 29th last year they were very poorly seeded at 85 but wrong tyre choice on saturday cost them a lot of time dropping down to 44th overnight.

Day two was much better. Despite a high speed fifth gear spin, they were holding 25th place going into the last stage, but they lost the oil pressure leaving them to crawl around the final test, dropping five postions to finish 30th overall and 11th in class.

The other local crew were Grant Andrew and Mark Wheeler in their Peugeot 205 GTI, finishing 53rd overall and 18th in class.