Wretched world rally season to close for Paddon

Rally Australia is the nearest World Rally Championship event New Zealanders have and many Kiwi fans are across the ditch this weekend to see Hayden Paddon and his Hyundai Motorsport team compete over three days around Coffs Harbour.

2017 has arguably been Paddon’s worst WRC season in competitive rallying with only one top five finish (second in Rally Poland) and one he is looking forward to finishing.

As to next year, it is still unclear to whether he will retain his seat in the Hyundai World Rally Championship team.

Many a top driver has had a similar slump in form but one cannot deny that he has the talent to compete for the drivers’ title. Starting tenth on the road in Friday’s day 1 will be a great advantage for Paddon, with the drivers before him sweeping the very dusty gravel roads, hopefully presenting him with a hard and more compact service.

Drivers and teams face 320 competitive kilometres on the rugged forest and shire roads with a mix of hard base track, some tight and twisty and others fast and flowing.

Shire roads are lined by trees close to the edge at many points and the dense rainforest and the low angle of the sun mornings and evenings can create a ‘strobe’ effect as it flashes through the branches. Tyre wear will be high.

While it is largely being reported that Kiwi Formula 1 driver Brendon Hartley will have a full time drive with Scuderia Toro Rosso F1 team in 2018, he still has one more World Endurance Championship round to complete this weekend in Bahrain. This is his sixth weekend in a row of top-level competition in either F1 or the WEC.

Joining him will be Earl Bamber and Timo Bernhard as one of the most successful chapters in Porsche’s motorsport history comes to an end. The 6 Hours of Bahrain will be the ninth and final round of the 2017 FIA World Endurance Championship and the last race entry for the Porsche 919 Hybrid.

While Hartley’s team has already secured both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ title, there will still be a highly competitive race against season rival Toyota GAZOO Racing, each with four wins for the season. Racing gets underway at 16:00 hrs local time with the sun setting at 16:46. Unlike at Le Mans, Bahrain has

5,000 floodlights illuminating the

F1 circuit, providing a great night spectacle for a global audience.

Largely gone unnoticed this week is the Super GT Series win by Kiwi driver Nick Cassidy, along with co-driver Ryo Hirakawa, both driving for the Lexus factory team. This is the premier ‘tin-top’ motorsport championship in Asia and the title could be considered a higher achievement than winning the Australian Supercars.

This title caps off a stella year for Cassidy who has also been competing in the Japanese Super Formula Series, the next quickest single seater cars outside of F1. Cassidy has an incredible talent that brought him global recognition three years ago when he finished third in the Macau Formula 3 Grand Prix.

Since then he has been highly sought after by both European and Japanese teams.