Competing in the first full day of Rally de Portugal, Hayden Paddon and new co-driver Sebastian Marshall demonstrated great pace with two stage wins, but were hampered by electrical issues on the third stage and then again, much more severely on special stage seven, leaving them 24th overall.
Having started Friday’s (WEST) itinerary of eight stages second overall following a good run in Thursday’s opening 3.36km super special, Paddon took the overall rally lead with his win in the first stage of the day. But bad luck again struck for the Kiwi rally star.
“Certainly, a case of what could have been again,” said Paddon. “Today’s certainly been a very positive day for the future anyway, with the changes we made before the rally, everything was working a lot better in the car and the setup. The confidence was good so we were able to set some fastest stage times. Okay, we had a small electrical problem on the morning loop which cost us seven seconds but other than that, it was all going to plan.
“And then this afternoon we made some setup changes which worked really well for the repeat runs. It was going really well, we had a good tyre strategy, everything was working really well in the car and we’d just taken the lead only for the car to stop with an electronic problem halfway through the last stage. That puts paid to any result for this rally. It’s frustrating, it’s yet again a story of bad luck. We’re not quite sure what’s caused the problem. The team will get it rectified and we’ll come back and get some experience for the last two days. We’ll keep working and keep moving forward because I’m sure this run of bad luck will turn around soon.”
The running order for Saturday’s six stages is reverse rally classification order for all WRC P1 drivers, which means Paddon and Marshall will be second on the road behind Valeriy Gorban. The rally continues on Sunday with just four stages.
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