Kiwi rally star Hayden Paddon, co-driver John Kennard and the Hyundai New Zealand Rally team put together a near perfect performance for the opening round of the 2022 Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship (NZRC) in Dunedin over the weekend of 9-10 April at the Winmax Brakes Otago Rally.
The WRC rally winner took a clean sweep of stage wins on Sunday in his Hyundai New Zealand i20 AP4 car to a comfortable win over Ben Hunt (Skoda Fabiz R5).
“The driveshaft failure at the start of the third stage on Saturday caused us a nervous moment when it spun the car around,” commented Paddon. “We got it back to service and the guys were able to fix it up.
“Then there was a puncture on the last stage (Day 1). Very mindful that SS8 was the power stage so tried to nurse it through the stage to minimise the time loss and get those power stage points. We were luckily able to do that.
“Overall, it’s been a good weekend. To get the win was our target. It always puts a bit of pressure on when you’ve only got one target for the weekend. To tick it off and get maximum points for the weekend is perfect, although probably not as plain sailing as we’d have liked.
Hunt impressed as he debuted the Skoda New Zealand Fabia for the first time and will feel he has a lot to build from with the new car.
Raana Horan completed the podium in the Generator Rental Services Skoda Fabia R5 after a sensible and measured drive across the weekend.
Robbie Stokes (Stokes Motorsport Ford Fiesta) showcased his outright speed to battle back from Saturday’s mechanical issues and a pair of spins early on Sunday to edge Emma Gilmour (Vantage Suzuki Swift) for fourth place.
Todd Bawden (Online Contractors Ford Fiesta R5) was sixth with Ari Pettigrew (Mitre 10 Mega Holden Barina AP4) seventh and Dylan Turner (LJ Hooker Audi AP4) in eighth.
Dylan Thomson put together a dominant day to be first overall 2WD in his Group N Ford Fiesta while he also took out his class ahead of youngster Bryn Jones (Ford Fiesta) and the experienced Charlie Evans (Honda Civic).
John Silcock (Mazda RX7) was second overall in 2WD – 14.4 seconds behind Thomson with Shane Murland (Ford Escort) over a minute back in third.
Silcock led Murland home in the Historic 2WD battle while reigning champion Anthony Jones was third in his Ford Escort.
Daniel Haines made a terrific debut in the Open 2WD class, claiming the victory in his Ford Escort. He led home Brent Taylor in the Toyota FT86 and Chris Alexander in the Toyota Corolla.
Paddon and Kennard delivered a masterclass of rallying action as they took the Hyundai i20 AP4 to seven wins from seven stages, notching up four more stage records along the way.
In the end, they finished with a margin of five minutes, 27.1 seconds over Hunt in second place. This isn’t the pair’s biggest winning margin at the Otago Rally, but Paddon was still very pleased with the strong result to get his 2022 competition season underway.
“We know there’s a lot more performance left there that we weren’t able to extract over the weekend,” said Paddon. “All in all, when you’ve got the margin we got, we can only be happy to bring home the result for Hyundai New Zealand and the team.
“The car’s feeling very good. We have to finetune a few aspects, having changed quite a few things on the car this weekend. Now we have more data of how these changes worked in a rally environment, so we’ll take those away and finetune that for the next rally in Whangarei in May.”
Championship points
1/ Hayden Paddon (Hyundai) 44
2/ Ben Hunt (Skoda) 36
3/ Raana Horan (Skoda) 25
4/ Robbie Stokes (Ford) 24
5/ Emma Gilmour (Suzuki) 22
6/ Todd Bawden (Ford) 17
7/ Ari Pettigrew (Holden) 17
8/ Dylan Turner (Audi) 15
9/ Mike Young (Subaru) 14
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