Hyundai Motorsport has strengthened its hold on a provisional podium position at the end of Saturday’s stages at Rally Poland, round seven of the 2016 FIA World Rally Championship.
Hayden Paddon picked up from where he left off on Friday with another commanding performance in the #4 New Generation i20 WRC. The Kiwi holds third place and is on target for his third podium finish of the 2016 season.
With a string of top five times in their Hyundai i20 WRC car, Paddon and Kennard have consistently challenged the leaders – Ott Tanak and Andreas Mikkelsen all day.
Saturday’s stages have seen drivers contest a repeat loop of three stages, run in a slightly different order on the second pass. The sandy roads have challenged the early runners like Sebastien Ogier and Paddon’s team-mate Dani Sordo, while Paddon, running fifth on the road, have had some benefit of the road sweeping of those ahead. With only a tyre-fitting zone at lunchtime, not a regular service, the day concluded with the Mikolajki Arena super special stage.
At the midday break to change tyres, Paddon said: “Not a bad morning. Obviously quite enjoyable stages again. We’re trying to enjoy the first pass for before it gets too rough as much as we can. On the soft tyre even in these very hot conditions, it’s moving around a little bit. Haven’t been adapting to this well enough, but really with how the car’s feeling. We’ve improved it overnight. Still very close between us and Andreas on the podium. Ott doing a good job a bit further in front. We’ll just concentrate on our own rally. It’s going to be a bit rougher this afternoon so we’ll make a few changes now and keep trying to move forward.”
At the end of Saturday, he said: “It’s been a good day. To be consistently up challenging the leaders has been good. The biggest thing today is to be consistent, we’ve had problems. The car’s been performing really well. Just a few things with the driving, I’m trying to get on top of, but all in all to be in a strong third place and not far off second is a good place to go into the last day. This rally’s not over. We’re expecting some rain overnight, if the rain does eventuate, we know the roads here become very, very slippery if wet. So all of a sudden a five second gap is not so big. We’ll hope for a bit of rain overnight because then that can give us a better chance and we’ll keep pushing on and see what result comes at the end of the rally.”
Paddon and Kennard have a 6.5 second margin to Mikkelsen in second and a 15.7 second gap back to their Hyundai team-mate Thierry Neuville in fourth when they commence the final day of the rally, Sunday, where two stages are run twice.
Overall Classification after Day Two
1. O. Tanak / R. Molder (Ford Fiesta RS WRC) 2:05:37.2
2. A. Mikkelsen / A. Jaeger (Volkswagen Polo R WRC) +21.3
3. H. Paddon / J. Kennard (Hyundai New Generation i20 WRC) +27.8
4. T. Neuville / N. Gilsoul (Hyundai New Generation i20 WRC) +43.5
5. J. M. Latvala / M. Anttila (Volkswagen Polo R WRC) +1:04.5
6. S. Ogier / J. Ingrassia (Volkswagen Polo R WRC) +1:08.1
7. S. Lefebvre / G. Moreau (Citroën DS3 WRC) +1:21.2
8. C. Breen / S. Martin (Citroën DS3 WRC) +1:33.2
9. E. Camilli / B. Veillas (Ford Fiesta RS WRC) +2:10.6
10. M. Østberg / O. Floene (Ford Fiesta RS WRC) +2:14.9
11. D. Sordo / M. Marti (Hyundai New Generation i20 WRC) +2:27.6
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