Kiwi rally stars Hayden Paddon and John Kennard have done what they set out to do with their 20th season of rallying together and that’s to secure the Possum Bourne Trophy as the winners of the 2025 EROAD Australian Rally Championship at the final round in Tasmania, 8-9 November.
Driving their Hyundai i20 Rally2, Paddon and Kennard are the second all-New Zealand pairing to win the Australian championship, following Possum Bourne and Craig Vincent who won the ARC title five times, consecutively from 1996 to 1999 and again in 2001, with Bourne also winning the title with Mark Stacey alongside in 2000 and 2002.
At 66 years old, Kennard may well be the oldest co-driver in the world to win a national rally title.
Having won four of the five previous ARC rounds, the Kiwis headed to the Burnie-based, two-day rally with a lead of 85 points.
On paper, they needed to finish 12th or better to secure the championship. On the results table, Paddon and Kennard finished third overall in Tasmania. But, just getting to the finish had its ups and down with a relatively smooth run through Saturday’s eight stages, the pair held a comfortable second place overnight, just 7.4 seconds behind rally leaders Harry Bates and Coral Taylor.
Finishing Sunday’s eight stages proved a little more challenging with a broken damper on the second run through the rally’s single, longest stage – a monster 44 km – meaning they needed to nursed the Hyundai through to the stage finish. The pair kept their cool and cruised through the rally’s final stage to ensure they reached the finish as planned and wrap up their first Australian rally title.
“We’re really happy to get the result over the line,” says Paddon. “There was a lot of pressure this weekend just to finish. Performance wasn’t really an aspect we needed to push for and it’s always a bit more nerve wracking when it’s like that. Things that can happen that are outside your control, which almost did happen with a broken damper this afternoon and losing a bit of time as we nursed the car home. In the end, we got home in P3 which, in some ways, is almost irrelevant.
“It’s great to bring home the result and win the championship. It’s great to do this for the whole team. Everyone’s put in a lot of work this year.
“To put our name alongside our hero Possum Bourne feels somewhat surreal. It’s very, very cool, and something the whole team can be very proud of, especially being on the road and travelling around Australia and doing it all on what’s pretty much a shoestring budget.
“We’ve really loved our time here in the Australian Championship: the comradery, how we’ve been welcomed, the competition levels have been really, really great. We’ve loved it, and this is a great way to finish off the season.”
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