After an 8-day trip to New Zealand, we are now back in Europe and more precisely in the land of the grand prix on gravel – Finland. This weeks Rally Finland has always been one of my favourites and it is an event where we have more experience at than Rally New Zealand or Australia, having competed here 5 times before.
While most other drivers enjoyed some summer break in Europe since Rally Poland, Katie and I headed back to NZ for some PR events and the CRC Speedshow. Despite the colder weather I always love getting home – New Zealand is the best place in the world! The long plane rides and nights in hotels also gave me more chance to prepare for Finland, fine tuning pace notes and studying last years footage – we are prepared and ready to go.
This event also is close to John’s heart and not just because his wife Satu is Finnish, or that they spend a lot of time every year in Finland. This will be John’s 50 WRC start and also his 30 year anniversary since his first WRC rally, Rally Finland in 1985. So I think that alone is a good reason to try and bring home a good result.
We have learnt some lessons from Poland and hope to put some of these into practice for Finland. However, as our Finland test was before Poland, we will use the pre event shakedown to confirm some of these and not just with the car set-up but also my driving. As 2/3 of the stages we have done before, naturally you have more confidence and can drive the car more committed – which is the opposite to Poland where we were attacking stages for the first time.
We are targeting another top 5 finish – which alone is no easy task. The competition within the top 10 is very close, and the expected wet conditions this week will mean our starting position of 8 will be a disadvantage. Nevertheless I’m sure we can counter some of this disadvantage if we do a good job on recce, and drive well on the rally.
If you have not already, one of the best ways to follow WRC events is with the new WRC+ app which you can buy online at www.wrc.com. I use this a lot to help study events, as onboard footage from every driver and every stage is accessible on this. Also during events you can watch live TV broadcasts (no matter where in the world you are) and watch live GPS tracking on each car – is pretty cool!
Finally we are pleased to announce that our new 2015 merchandise range is available to purchase. You can get yours from any Hyundai NZ dealer or order online by emailing Sue at Pakn’Save sue.lee@paknsave-si.co.nz. Photos can be seen on www.facebook.com/haydenpaddonwrc of our cool new look that we are now looking to standardise.
Look forward to keeping you up to date throughout the rally. Like always you can find all the necessary links to follow us on our homepage, www.haydenpaddon.com.
Comments