Hayden Paddon and co-driver John Kennard currently sit second in the Rally Islas Canarias standings following a mixed day over the asphalt stages on the Canary Islands.
It’s French driver Yoann Bonato who leads the way, an 11-second lead to his advantage over the Kiwi after a strong showing saw him top four of the six stages run overnight.
Paddon sits comfortably in second spot driving BRC Racing Team’s Hyundai i20 N Rally2, 13 seconds ahead of Efrén Llarena who drove his Skoda Fabia RS Rally 2 to sit third.
The Kiwi entered Day 2 of the rally with a narrow 0.4-second lead over the pack following Friday’s Super-Special Stage but was unable to replicate the pace in SS2, the first run of Galdar, uncharacteristically finishing 18th and some 23.5 seconds shy of the pace-setters to drop to 11th in the standings.
He was quick to bounce back at SS3, setting the second-best time over the first run of Tejeda, 4.6 seconds shy of stage winner Yoann Bonato. It was the same result on SS4’s first run of Santa Lucia, the Frenchman this time 3 seconds better than the Kiwi to take the overall rally lead with Paddon moving up to third.
In typical Paddon fashion, the Kiwi learned from his losses over the second run of Galdar, improving to eighth-fastest on the stage but limiting his losses to just 4 seconds this time around. Bonato again took the stage win.
The Frenchman continued to throw down the gauntlet on SS6, the second run of Tejeda, topping the timesheets for the fourth time of the day to extend his overall rally lead to 11.2 seconds over Paddon, who moved up to second overall the stage prior.
Paddon finally got the better of the Citreon C3 Rally2 on the second run of Santa Lucia, taking the stage win over his rival by just 0.2 seconds to round out the day.
Rally Islas Canarias returns for six more stages tonight, being two runs over each of Arucas, Moya-Valleseco and San Mateo-Valsequillo.
The rally can be watched live with a paid subscription on WRC+ or followed via the European Rally Championship’s live updates.
SS8 gets underway at 8.54 pm tonight.
