Paddon wins Otago rally – demonstrates EV too

Kiwi rally stars Hayden Paddon and John Kennard took a commanding win at the Rally of Otago in the Paddon Rallysport Hyundai i20 AP4 on April 16-18.

Paddon also drove the Hyundai Kona EV rally car at the rally, doing two demonstration runs at Saturday’s super special tarmac stage. While the electric car is primarily intended to run on gravel and is slightly compromised in terms of performance on tarmac, Paddon says it was great to show Otago rally fans what the EV is capable of.

“Being on tarmac sacrifices some performance in the Hyundai Kona EV rally car but people liked seeing it up close and the majority of feedback is very positive,” Paddon says.

“We still have a lot of development to happen with this car, including the noise component, but we look forward to showing it to Whangarei rally fans in a few weeks.”

With a winning margin of seven minutes and 32.9 seconds, Paddon and Kennard were delighted to net their fourth win in the Hyundai at this event and earn maximum points in the opening round of the 2021 New Zealand Rally Championship (NZRC) in their internal combustion engine (ICE) car.

While other NZRC competitors experienced a range of mechanical and performance challenges across the two-day rally, Paddon and Kennard had a near perfect run to win 12 of the 14 special stages and set new stage records on 11 stages.

Two punctures on Sunday afternoon prevented a clean sweep of stage wins, but Paddon was still pleased to return to competition in such strong form.

Paddon credits the Paddon Rallysport team for a huge effort since the last event for the AP4 car in November 2020 when Paddon and Kennard won the City of Auckland Rally but crashed out of the Battle of Jack’s Ridge which required a rebuild of the car.

With last year’s championship cancelled due to the impact of COVID-19 the 44 NZRC entrants at Otago were excited to get back into action 546 days since the last NZRC event in 2019.

Next up for Paddon Rallysport is the second NZRC round, the International Rally of Whangarei on May 15 and 16.

Paddon says the team is doing the full New Zealand Rally Championship and also the Australian rounds of the Asia Pacific Rally Championship – COVID allowing.

“We’re waiting on the trans-Tasman bubble (which opened on April 19) to stabilise but will travel to Australia if we can.”

The team has no budget to take the EV rally car to Australia, “but if a budget became available we would”, Paddon says.

If Paddon goes to Australia, he will likely run a Hyundai R5 car with an Australian team rather than take the AP4 car from New Zealand.

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