Hayden Paddon and John Kennard have taken another significant step towards winning the Australian Championship title after their Heat 2 victory on Sunday sealed the overall Adelaide Hills Rally.
A dominant morning from the current Australian Rally Championship (ARC) leaders, where they won four consecutive stages, set up the 31-second Heat 2 win over Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin, who finished second for the weekend overall to take the title fight to the season finale in Tasmania.
While Paddon and Kennard comfortably sealed the victory on Sunday, the leading Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia GR Yaris endured a challenging battle with the Hyundai i20N of Alex Rullo and Steve Glenney, with their day-long battle eventually decided by 15 seconds.
“Every time we go to new stages, we seem to find a bit more performance, so we always said that the 15km stage was our target, and winning that one really did the damage for us,” Paddon said.
“Being 85 points in front isn’t really a position you like to be in. I’d have preferred to either be closer or have the title wrapped up, because then you can go to Tassie and just push. But now, being in this position, we have to finish seventh or better.”
Taking out fourth place for the day were Harry Bates and Coral Taylor, who struggled to find pace after their heat-ending incident on Saturday afternoon, while Clayton Hoy and Erin Kelly edged closer to the WOLF Production Cup title after a convincing Heat 2 win over Bodie Reading and Brad Jones.
In addition to their class victory, Hoy and Kelly rounded out the top five outright for the Heat, securing an outright top four for the weekend as a whole – the Mitsubishi Evo 6 crew enjoying a 5.8-second outright stage win on SS15, which was undoubtedly one of the highlights of the weekend.
The duo’s unlikely stage win, which made them just the sixth stage winners of the season, ended a dominant streak from Paddon and Kennard, who, up until the midday service, had won all four of the morning stages to build a 30-second lead over Bates and McLoughlin.
While Paddon and Kennard charged out to a decent lead after the first four stages, Bates and McLoughlin had to fight their way back into second after finishing nine seconds behind Rullo and Glenney in the Heat’s second stage, eventually going into the midway break less than a second off the Hyundai of Rullo and Glenney.
In the first loop of the afternoon’s two stages, Lewis extended his gap over Rullo as he finished third behind Hoy and Paddon before grabbing his first win on the day’s sixth stage (SS16) in a bid to close the gap.
Lewis and McLoughlin then capped off a strong afternoon with a Power Stage victory, giving them important bonus points in the title race, as Paddon and Kennard finished the stage in third place behind Harry and Taylor, having won the penultimate stage of the weekend.
Those final two stages of the weekend also saw the battle for sixth place decided as the returning Peter Rullo and Ben Searcy pipped Reading and Jones by just one and a half seconds in the Heat, while Troy Dowel had dropped to eighth for the day.
Despite falling short of Peter in Heat 2, Reading ultimately finished the event ahead of the West Australian in the event as a whole courtesy of his fifth-place finish yesterday, while Peter and Searcy’s stellar Sunday behind the wheel of a Škoda Fabia R5 saw them jump Dowel and Webb in the event standings to finish sixth.
Rounding out the top 10 for Heat 2 were Subaru WRX Challenge winners Jackson and Damien Long in ninth, and ARC 2WD Cup winners Tony Sullens and Kaylie Newell – the two crews’ Sunday wins sealing the overall event victory in their respective classes.
Just missing out on a top 10 finish on Sunday were Molly Spalding and Matthew Dillon; however, the pair took out the ARC Classic Cup victory for the Heat and overall honours after Saturday’s winners, Glenn Brinkman and Scott Beckwith, retired on Sunday morning due to a broken driveshaft.
Just one round remains in the 2025 Australian Rally Championship, with Rally Tasmania to take place in Burnie on 7–9 November.
Header Image: Shots By TayB/Tayler Burke
