Why Paddon’s dad ended a 22-year retirement

Context is everything.

Twenty two years is deemed absolutely nothing in terms of the amount of time elapsed between Kalle Rovanperä’s birth and his first World Rally Championship title.

But apply that same time period to the gap between a driver’s two last events – it’s an absolute chasm!

Similarly, New Zealand’s biennial, seven-day and 575-mile Silver Fern Rally is a challenge regardless of what a driver’s done before – packing a whole season’s worth of mileage into one gruelling, historic event.

But again, when you’ve not driven since 2002 that’s a borderline ludicrous challenge to throw yourself into. So why did Chris Paddon do it?

“I asked him the same question,” Hayden Paddon laughs.

As we’re about to discover, Chris shares plenty of characteristics with his European Rally Championship-winning son: determination, unflappability and a deadpan delivery.

“That was probably one of the reasons, because it seemed like a challenge,” Chris tells DirtFish. “But then when you’d done it, it wasn’t a challenge. It was pretty easy. I could have carried on – could have gone for another week.”

Ending a 22-year retirement from competition was clearly a big deal for the Paddons, even if reflecting on such momentous moments isn’t really their style. Hayden admits his reaction to the news his dad would be making a comeback was “initially disbelief”.

“I thought he was joking!” he adds. “Because it has been so long. From what I saw, there was never really an inkling to want to get back in the driver’s seat. I think I even tried to get you back in the driving seat a couple times with a cross car and there was always an excuse for her not to do it.”

Ever since Hayden’s driving career began, Chris’s came to an end; a selfless sacrifice many parents would make for their children.

“Pretty much when I jumped out, he jumped in, and it was pretty cool watching him do what he did. Eventually he was a wee bit better than me…,” Chris teases.

“Eventually… god,” Hayden responds. “I seem to remember a time trial in the Mini around the paddock that you didn’t win…”

“No, I let you win mate!”

For a moment, I’m just at the dinner table with the Paddons. But back to business: Chris has no regrets over giving up driving.

“Not once did I ever have the inclination to go rallying until the other day,” he admits, “because it was probably more fun doing what we’d done with Hayden and being part of his journey than I would ever have done.

“I only ever used to do it for s**** and giggles, so it was just a way of going away for the weekend and having a bit of fun.”

Which is exactly what Silver Fern was about. With the rally finishing right outside his house in Wanaka, one conversation turned into another and suddenly it really was happening.

“If one person would have said no that probably would’ve derailed it, because it wouldn’t have taken much for me to go cold on the idea,” Chris says.

“I’m not really into bucket list type stuff but I suppose it’s one of those things that when you’ve done it, we will think back about it,” he adds. “And during the event, it was all pretty cool. It was more than just driving the car and fixing the car.

“It was even the six months running up to the event, getting the car ready and Hayden doing the logistics and talking about it. So it was more than just that that week. It was quite a few months of a process, really.”

The car itself was poignant. Though it wasn’t the exact same Toyota Leven the family used to own, it was built to be an exact replica.

“When we first talked about it we sort of threw around a few ideas of a few different cars, but at the end of the day when I decided what the car was going to be it seemed to be stupid why we were even considering anything else because it was always such a great wee car,” Chris explains.

“As it proved to be in this event, it was so reliable, fun to drive, made all the right noises, and still looked cool.”

“When I saw the car all painted up in green and everything, with all the livery and everything for the first time, that brought back a lot of memories because at the end of the day, that was the last car dad drove and the first car I drove, so there was a lot of memories with that particular car,” Hayden adds.

“To see it again in the right colors and everything… it was pretty surreal. But I guess if we did things fairly, if he gave me his car, I should really be giving you my car…”

This is far from the first time during my 15 minutes on the phone to the other side of the world that Hayden tries his best to convince his dad to let Silver Fern be the start of something, not the end.

“He was just starting to get the hang of it during the rally and getting back up to speed,” Hayden points out, “so it seems like a waste not to carry that momentum on.”

But what Chris initially plays down as “a bit of an issue” during the rally has swayed him against making driving a habit again.

“I was going pretty good,” he recalls, “but yeah… I sort of shortcutted a couple of corners and hit a couple of holes and did a little bit of damage to myself and the car. I thought ‘S***, this is probably not the way I want to end the rally’ so I tamed things back a wee bit from that point onwards.

“By the second day I was starting to think ahead at maybe Otago next year or something like that, but then when I had the incident and hurt myself a bit, I instantly thought ‘no, I don’t want to spend the next 40 years in a wheelchair so I’m not going to do too much more of this’ because I think I’d hurt myself if I did it too much more – and I’m too old.

“I’d probably nearly go as far as saying that’s definitely the last [rally].”

“No, come on…” Hayden pleads, “the car’s sitting right there in the driveway at the door, ready to do another rally.”

Chris responds: “What I’m hoping is one of my daughters will come along, and they want to do a little bit as well, so then I can give them a bit of a hand up, and then that’ll take me out of the league, you see.”

Not that Hayden’s letting him off that easily.

“I reckon we’ll just watch this space. I reckon we’ll get you back into another rally,” he plots.

How about the Hyundai AP4?

“No way! I’d never drive that car,” Chris insists.

“You don’t know until you try it…”

“It would be such a big accident,” Chris laughs.

“We’ll just go where there’s plenty of room for error….”

10/10 for effort here, Hayden.

“No, I would disgrace the car,” Chris believes. “That would be the main reason I wouldn’t do anything.”

“We’ll see,” Hayden smiles. “We’ll get you on a few more wines and have this discussion again…”