Paddon hits the road again at ‘second home’
Hayden Paddon is looking forward to racing at his “second home” in Finland this week after being forced out of Rally Estonia a fortnight ago due to Covid.
Back competing in the World Rally Championship in the WRC2 class, the Kiwi and co-driver John Kennard were third in class and 15th overall after the opening day.
The Kiwi was miffed at having to pull out of Rally Estonia and missing valuable testing and car development. They did, however, get muchneeded gravel time in the Hyundai i20 N Rally2 car ahead of this week during a 50km blast on a closed road.
“Covid knocked me about a bit, but the brain fog is all gone, so everything is all good now,” Paddon told the Weekend Herald from Finland.
“It hasn’t helped matters much missing out on Estonia, as the plan is to get as many race kilometres as possible to develop the car. It puts us a little on the back foot and that’s why we decided to do a test last week.
“It was good to get a few test kilometres under our belt and test a few things in a low pressure environment. The beauty of testing is you get to try things away from competition and can be a bit more experimental.”
“It’s a great way to see what does and doesn’t work. We had a pretty good test and learnt quite a bit.”
The Finish rally is a firm favourite with the 31-year-old and particularly suits his driving style. The roads are reminiscent of what he grew up on in New Zealand, with their fast and flowing characteristics allowing the cars to dance from corner to corner.
“I really love this rally [Finland] and it’s probably the rally I have the most experience on. I think this is our 10th time here and I’ve done this rally more times than I’ve done any rally in New Zealand.
“It’s a bit like a second home. It’s always fast, flowing, with lots of jumps, pretty much a gravel rollercoaster. When you get it right, it’s an amazing sensation.”
Paddon has been at pains to say this foray into Europe is primarily to develop the car in preparation for the New Zealand round of the WRC in September.
“The level of competition here in WRC2 is incredibly high, with a lot of very fast locals, so we’ve got our work cut out. I know a podium will be hard, but that’s the goal and what we’ll be pushing towards,” said Paddon.