Hayden Paddon is used to winning rallies – he’s done so nearly 50 times in his career. It’s part and parcel of being, globally, New Zealand’s most successful rally driver.
But never before in the Kiwi’s 36 years on earth had he won a rally by less than a second.
That was until last weekend, when just 0.88 seconds separated Paddon’s winning Hyundai i20 R5 and Dane Skeete’s Subaru Impreza WRC.
In a thrilling grandstand finish to this year’s Rally Barbados, Paddon got the job done on the final Bushy Park super-special stage to overhaul the local legend and claim a famous victory – one that has taught him plenty for the remainder of his European Rally Championship campaign.
By his own admission, Barbados was a nice change of pace for Paddon and co-driver John Kennard after their intense globe-trotting schedule this year.
“Obviously it’s more of a relaxed atmosphere so me, John and our partners went over there to enjoy ourselves and I guess get a little bit of downtime as well,” he explained.
But… (there’s always a but).
“But of course when the helmet goes on I’m as competitive as ever so it doesn’t matter what rally or what event, we were there to try and win.”
On the face of it, Paddon was well equipped. In six rallies prior to his trip to Barbados, the Hyundai New Zealand driver had won three of them and was second on two more. And he topped the King of the Hill contest which runs a week before the rally and sets the seeded order for the event.
But Barbados is notorious for its short, sharp and unique stages held in sweltering heat, and it’s always extremely hard for a visitor to keep up with the locals who know the place like the back of their hands.
Formula 2 racer Zane Maloney, his uncle Stuart and last year’s winner Dane Skeete – son of record Rally Barbados victor Roger – were always going to pose a real threat to Paddon, but typically the former World Rally Championship ace had a plan.
“After the recce we could see the stages on day two were a lot faster and a lot straighter which would suit the power of a WRC car more, so we had to try and take advantage of the slightly more technical stages on day one,” Paddon told DirtFish.
Zane Maloney’s Škoda led after Thursday evening’s opener at Bushy Park, but Paddon laid down a marker on the first closed-road stage – dominating it by over five seconds to vault into the lead.
Paddon would go unbeaten for the rest of the day’s nine stages to hold a 14.59s lead over Skeete heading into Sunday.
“We wanted 10 seconds,” he explained.
“That was the gap we were going for as a bit of a buffer for Sunday which we had, and then yeah I did my best to throw it all away on the first stage on Sunday morning and we were back to square one again!”
Paddon’s not one for hyperbolic or dramatic statements, so when he describes something as one of the biggest moments he’s had, that means it was definitely a heart-stopper!
A fifth-gear spin on a narrow, bumpy road would do that to anyone.
“We just got caught out by a bump in the road that I didn’t identify in the recce,” Paddon said.
“It was a flat left-hand corner and in the cut there was a bit of a hole and the hole just bounced the front of the car off the road a bit and then, like a pendulum, the rear swung around and we were passengers from there really.
“It was quite a big moment – the fact we were going down the road backwards in fifth gear and didn’t touch a thing!
“Biggest moment I’ve ever had without damaging the car.”
Paddon still led the rally, but only just. Skeete was now only 1.72s behind, and the rest of the rally’s stages would play into the hands of his Subaru.
“Try as we might, we just couldn’t match him,” Paddon said of Skeete, who he was quick to point out drove superbly.
“Dane came past us, he got a couple of tenths here and there but he took about five seconds out of us over the next five stages and we just couldn’t really close the gap down.
“It was a matter of press the reset button at that last service and decide from three seconds back we need to try and do something here, so I had to push pretty hard over those last three stages to try and close the gap.”
SS18 was fruitful for Paddon as he swiped close to two seconds from Skeete to trail by just 1.36s. But then he almost undid all of his own hard work again when he ripped the right-rear wheel off at the end of the penultimate stage!
“Yeah last corner of the second last stage so… we were trying!” Paddon laughed. “We weren’t leaving anything on the table.
“There was a little bit of risk involved so that’s what happened. We were probably a little bit lucky to get away with it and because there you’ve got remote service, the guys were able to replace most of the broken parts on the right-rear wheel in about 15 minutes so they did a pretty awesome job in keeping us going.”
Despite the mishap Paddon still won the stage by 0.1s, but it left him with 1.26s to find in just 1.5s miles for the final stage.
A fairly improbable task, but Paddon dug deep. Skeete did his best, but it just wasn’t quite enough.
Paddon stopped the clock 2.14s faster than his rival to take an incredible last-gasp victory.
“I was definitely surprised by the gap, but as we know those sort of stages are all about being really clean, neat and tidy,” Paddon said.
“Particularly when you’re on a big, wide open racetrack it’s very easy to have the urge to maybe overdrive so it was just a matter of using our experience of how we drive those stages and it may look boring from the outside but we know that it’s effective inside the car so we just had to do that.”
As always with success there was joy and satisfaction at a job well done, but also lessons learned for the future.
Paddon explained: “We’ve got three Tarmac rallies in a row to finish off the European championship and to be honest those last couple of stages there in Barbados, even though it was a different car, different conditions, was probably the best I’ve driven on Tarmac to date.
“So it was good to just learn where the thresholds are a little bit more and just feel the speed a little bit because essentially we’ve still done very limited Tarmac rallying compared to what we’ve done on gravel.
“On gravel we know what to feel for and we know what’s good and what’s bad. On Tarmac, obviously we’ve got some good experience but we’re still just trying to get that last 1 or 2% out of it which we’re going to need once we get to those final ERC events.”
Before then though is this week’s Rally Liepāja, which Paddon heads to with a healthy 37-point lead in the championship. It means that no matter what happens this weekend, Paddon will still leave Latvia as the series leader.
But just as he has for the entire season so far, Paddon has a championship head fixed on.
“I guess at the moment we’re in a nice position where we’re not in a must-win as such, but we’ve set ourselves a goal that we go to each rally and try and get on the podium – so that’s no different,” he said.
“But of course, to even be on the podium you still have to push, you can’t relax. It’s more a matter of how many risks you’re taking. So I’d say you’re still equalling driving at 100%, it’s just factoring in how many risks you’re going to take if you’re battling for the rally win and that’s what it’s going to come down to: how we’re going against our competitors, how we’re feeling in the car, often that comes naturally.
“So it’s probably a matter of do day one to the best of our abilities, assess where we’re at and then reassess for day two. A bit like what we did in Poland – obviously day two didn’t go quite to plan but there’s lessons in that that I’m sure can help us in Latvia.
“We’re feeling fresh, feeling prepared so it’s just a matter of going there, doing a good reconnaissance, have a good test before the rally and I’m confident we can put together a strong showing.”
