All-Out Win For Paddon And Hudson In Southland Rally

Kiwi rally star Hayden Paddon was back in action on home turf over the weekend with a dominant win at the Southern Lights Rally.

With Christchurch’s Jared Hudson calling the notes as his co-driver and driving the PRG-run Hyundai i20 AP4, Paddon won all ten stages of the rally which started on the shortest day of the year in full dark on the 11.4km Pebbly Hills stage north-east of Invercargill.

The pair continued their winning streak throughout Saturday’s nine stages as the rally, run by the Race Rally Group, took competitors across a wide swathe of classic gravel Southland roads, including a monster 45km stage to open the day’s action. After 157 competitive kilometres, Paddon and Hudson finished a handsome three minutes ahead of Ben Hunt and Tony Rawstorn in second place.

“Overall, it was a really good rally,” says Paddon. “It’s a nice challenge to come and rally in Southland again after nearly 20 years. I don’t really remember the stages but the organisers put together a great challenge with a big variety of stages, some super-fast rural roads and some technical forestry stages.”

Paddon has enjoyed getting the Hyundai i20 AP4 out again this season. “The car went very well; it’s definitely on-song, thanks to our PRG crew, and made Jared’s and my job easy. We concentrated on having good clean stages and building up a margin earlier on, then managing that for the rest of the rally. All went well from that respect with no issues. Jared did an amazing job in the car, despite being thrown the challenge with the night stage and several long, fast stages which aren’t easy from a co-driver’s perspective. Once again, he did well and his skills have grown with every rally.”

Having missed the Otago round of the New Zealand Rally Championship in April, Paddon returned from Europe where he’s aiming to secure his second FIA European Rally Championship title to win the second NZRC rally in South Canterbury.

“Taking maximum championship points here in Southland was again the objective. Having missed the opportunity to earn points at the opening round, we’re in the position where we need to be taking all the points that we can. We’ve got a long, hard road ahead of us to close that points gap to Robbie Stokes and Ben Hunt at the top of the NZRC leaderboard. We’ve got to keep chipping away at it and stayed focused on our core goal of earning as many points as we can at each round.”

After this event in Southland, the third NZRC rally of a six-round championship, Paddon is fourth on the points table with 60 points, compared to Stokes with 84 points and Hunt with 83.

The next NZRC event is the Daybreaker Rally in Manawatu which takes place in September, but next up for Paddon with long-term co-driver John Kennard alongside is Rally Estonia, the fourth event in the 2024 ERC calendar.

Paddon Racing Group appreciates the support of Hyundai New Zealand, Mitre 10 Trade, Z Energy, Valvoline, Makita, Bars Bugs, Pirelli, OMP/Racer Products, Winmax Brake Pads, South Canterbury Road Safety, TrailLite, Repco NZ, Stedi, Highlands Motorsport Park, MITO, Machinery House, Design Windows, Bartercard, Mike Greer Homes, Provident Insurance, King Gee Clothing and Signbiz.

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