Hayden Paddon and co-driver Jared Hudson drove to victory at the one-day South Canterbury Rally on Saturday, maintaining his lead in the New Zealand Rally Championship.
Paddon and Hudson took on 148km of stages throughout the Canterbury region starting the day’s nine special stages in Waimate, then heading north to Timaru before finishing up at Levels Raceway.
“Everything went reasonably well in South Canterbury,” said Paddon.
“The stages were really fast, a couple faster than we’d normally expect there, mixed in with some traditional stages. We were managing a bit of a problem with the car overheating, but we were able to get to the end for the win which was our goal. The team did a great job, as always.”
Paddon’s winning margin was four minutes with Ben Hunt in second place, 20.1 seconds behind Paddon.
With Paddon set to leave for his European WRC2 campaign later this month, the maximum points scoring weekend was crucial in maintaining his lead in the NZRC championship considering he will miss the Hawkes Bay rally that takes place on July 23.
Paddon was grateful to his Hyundai New Zealand Rally team throughout the day who managed to get the car to the finish, despite battling a small overheating problem.
Hudson’s co-driving performance impressed Paddon considering the prior weekend’s test with the two was cancelled due to heavy snow around Central Otago.
“Jared did an amazing job, especially being thrown in the deep end after our planned test last weekend was snowed out. He did a phenomenal job, growing with confidence as the day progressed. Better than I expected actually, given the circumstances, so I was very impressed with the job he did.” Paddon said.
With the 2022 NZRC campaign now over for Paddon, he now heads to Europe to meet with co-driver John Kennard for the Tour European Rally (TER) event, Rally di Alba in Italy, on 24 and 25 June.
In what will be Paddon’s first tarmac rally in five years, the pair will be driving a Hyundai i20 R5 run by Hyundai Motorsport Italy (HMI).
“I’m certainly excited to be heading to Europe this coming week. The whole team is excited, to be honest, as there’s been a ton of work to get us back to the other side of the world. I can’t wait to get into it.”
Main image: Geoff Ridder