Kiwi Hayden Paddon and British co-driver Seb Marshall have ended the first full day of Rally Finland in a hard-charging fourth position. In high temperatures, the pair have consistently been among the top five all day on Friday’s special stages of the rally dubbed the Finnish Grand Prix.
Road position has played a key role for all 12 WRC competitors with Paddon able to take advantage of his starting position of 11th.
Ninth equal overall following Thursday evening’s opening super special stage in central Jyväskylä (the rally’s host town), Paddon jumped to fifth in the classification after Friday’s first 20km test. From there, he was in a close-fought tussle with Jari-Matti Latvala and Teemu Suninen all day for the top five standings, gaining a 9.7s advantage on Suninen to hold fourth by day’s end.
Paddon said: “I think we can be pretty happy with our opening day, even if we could have probably taken a few more risks. We didn’t want to overdo it, because we were focused on getting the set-up right for the whole weekend. In the morning loop, we had to adapt to the conditions and our pace notes were a bit slow in places. From there, we started to enjoy the car and the stages more. We’ve been consistent, had good pace and that’s allowed us to stay in touch with the leading three. We’ve now got to build on this over the next two days.”
On Saturday (Finnish time), crews face eight stages over a competitive distance of 142.86km, the longest individual day of the rally.
With the running order for Saturday determined by reversing the event standings at the end of Friday, Paddon and Marshall will be fifth on the road.
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