Hayden Paddon and John Kennard, New Zealand’s most successful rally pairing, have added a second-place podium finish in WRC Rally del Paraguay to their long list of achievements with Hyundai on the world’s sporting stage.
Running 28 to 31 August, the Paraguayan round of the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship was based in Encarnación and became notable for tyre problems and incidents among top-running competitors on Friday.
While Paddon and Kennard had their own tyre issues later in the day, they demonstrated stage-winning pace to lead the rally outright by Friday lunchtime – the first time Paddon had led a WRC rally since Rally de Portugal 2018.
The New Zealanders then gave it their all to hold on to second place from Friday afternoon through to Sunday’s finish, ending up 25.8 seconds behind the winners, Finns Sami Pajari and co-driver Marko Salminen, and 14.2 seconds ahead of third-placed Hyundai Motorsport teammates Adrian Fourmaux and co-driver Alexandre Coria.
Paraguay’s second place adds to their third place at WRC Croatia in April this year, a remarkable achievement for the Kiwis who have been one of three driver/co-driver pairings driving Hyundai Motorsport’s third i20 N Rally 1 car at selected WRC events this year.
Paddon said, “I’m not sure this podium is better than Croatia because of what happened in the second-to-last stage [red-flagged and not restarted following an accident involving Takamoto Katsuta and co-driver Aaron Johnston], but I feel like we can celebrate it. This feels proper, amazing. Everyone had their issues, as we did too, and since Friday we’ve been managing that gap to others behind me.
“There’s certainly more speed there, but it felt unnecessary to deliver that this weekend. We did our job; second is almost as good as a win, particularly with the journey we’ve been on.
“The car’s still a little bit foreign to me. There are things technically that could be better for me. The car’s very good on gravel. You’ve only got to look at Thierry and Adrian’s speed on gravel; it’s fast. There’s a little bit of fine-tuning for my driving style, which is a bit different. I learned a lot about the car this weekend that I didn’t learn in our pre-event test.
“That’s all part of the process. We always knew it would be tough jumping straight in the car, but I probably surprised myself with how well we adjusted.
“I wondered if people thought we’d been a bit of a guilty signing this year, especially after Monte Carlo. Then I was happy with the progress we made on tarmac and knew we’d been given a tough opportunity with the rallies we had. Off the back of that success, we obviously got the reward of this rally. We knew this was such an important rally, and I did a lot of preparation to do the best I could.”
Over Friday’s opening four stages, while others suffered tyre and engine issues, Paddon and Kennard kept their cool to lead the rally by 23.9s by Friday lunchtime. On the afternoon’s repeat run through the same four stages, Paddon had his own tyre problems, but maintained sufficient pace to hold second place in the standings at the end of Friday, 11.9 seconds behind Finn Sami Pajari and 44.4 seconds ahead of championship leader Elfyn Evans in third.
On Friday, Paddon said, “I think everyone’s had problems, so if we can drive out of two stages on punctures and still be within touching distance, we’ve been unlucky but lucky at the same time.”
Saturday brought nine competitive stages but not the forecast wet weather. Paddon and Kennard maintained a steady but competitive pace, with regular top four and five stage times to hold their second place overall by day’s end, now 24.1 seconds behind Pajari.
Paddon said, “Two pretty clean days so far to be in second place still. Happy that we’ve been able to hold our own and maintain those gaps to other competitors. Today, obviously, conditions that we weren’t expecting. That affected our tyre plan a bit, as we’d set up the car for the forecast weather conditions. Learned a few things about the car today and still a few things I could do a bit better.
“There are a lot of things that could still happen in this rally. Tonight we’re going to knuckle down, do our homework and prepare as best we can. We’ll try to bring home a podium result tomorrow, but there’s still a long way to go.”
Sunday’s focus was again on delivering enough pace to hold second place without unnecessary risk, and that’s exactly what Paddon and Kennard delivered.
Paddon concludes, “Massive thanks to Hyundai for this opportunity this year; we’ve just absolutely loved it. For our Kiwi supporters and our own PRG team back at home for allowing me to still do this. And of course, John, 22 years in the car together. We don’t know what’s next, but this has been one hell of a journey. He’s an absolute legend.”
Paddon returns to New Zealand for his next event, the Ashley Forest Rallysprint on 19 and 20 September, where he’s going all out to set a new hillclimb record in his Hyundai i20 AP4.
PRG appreciates the support of their partners including Hyundai New Zealand, Caltex Havoline Oil, Mitre 10 Trade, Winmax Brake Pads, Bar’s Bugs, EROAD, Ben Nevis Station, Wipertech, Design Windows, MITO, Repco, Machinery House, King Gee, KiwiFibre, TrialLite, Hankook, Z Energy, Blaster and Signbiz.
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