Kiwis aim for Aussie title

Hayden Paddon and navigator John Kennard are only one event away from winning the Australian Rally Championship.

Driving their Hyundai i20 N Rally2, they took an emphatic win at the penultimate round, the Adelaide Hills Rally, earlier this month.

The series’ final round in Tasmania runs from November 7-9.

Paddon and Kennard claimed heats one and two in South Australia to take the maximum allotment of 100 points. 

Their closest rival, Harry Bates, crashed out on the first day and is now 149 points behind Paddon. That leaves only Harry’s brother Lewis in title contention, but 85 points behind Paddon and Kennard.

Paddon claimed heat one by 20.7 seconds over Lewis Bates before backing that up in the second heat with a winning margin of 31.2 seconds.

He says: “All in all, it was a pretty good weekend. It’s always about managing things, trying to build a gap in the mornings on the first loop and then managing things like tyres in the afternoons.

“A weekend of management is what I’ve called this one in terms of tyres and strategy, and we did what we needed to do to secure the win.”

Paddon adds it was “mission accomplished” in respect of winning the first heat and extending his championship lead.

“It was a real shame that Harry had a little off-road excursion. It was a close fight and I think we would have been pushing each other right to the end. With Harry on the side of the road, we sort of backed off a bit in the evening just to look after the tyres.”