They say hindsight is 20/20, and if that’s true, there’s every chance Hayden Paddon is ruing his decision to avoid the rock that eventually led to his Rally of Portugal retirement last weekend.
The Kiwi’s return to the factory Hyundai WRC squad couldn’t have been going much better, with a perfect pre-event preparation that included two monstrous victories in the opening two rounds of the New Zealand Rally Championship.
Back in the seat of his WRC rocket, a set-up change immediately left Paddon feeling “really good”, and that feeling was soon confirmed when he took the lead after the first real stage of the rally on Friday morning.
He was leading after stage two, never dropped lower than third over the next three stages, and then regained the lead after stage six.
But then things went pair-shaped.
Early in stage seven he took evasive action to avoid a huge rock on the inside of a corner, slid wide on the outside of the corner and collected a roadside culvert that caused instant retirement and sent Paddon to hospital in a helicopter.
It was a shattering end for Paddon. Perhaps more so for the thousands of Kiwi fans watching at home.
It wasn’t bad driving. It wasn’t a missed pacenote. It wasn’t even a driver feeling the pressure of leading a WRC event.
It was bad luck, plain and simple, and could so easily have led to nothing more than a couple of seconds lost.
In contrast, look at Sebastien Ogier, Ott Tanak and Jari-Matti Latvala’s retirements.
All three DIDN’t take evasive action when encountering road-side hazards. The Toyotas hit big rocks, while the World Champion simply clipped a tree root that broke his Fiesta’s steering.
And all three retired virtually on the spot.
Paddon’s decision to take evasive action proved fruitless and ended in the same result.
In future, Geraldine’s finest may choose to simple hit that rock on the inside of a corner and “hope for the best”.
He could do a lot worse.
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