Hayden Paddon has had a dream start to his maiden EROAD Australian Rally Championship (ARC) season after winning Heat 1 of the Toyota Gazoo Racing Rally of Canberra.
Behind the wheel of the Hyundai i20N – Rally 2, Paddon and John Kennard claimed the Heat win over Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin by a solid 30 seconds, with Scott Pedder and Glenn Macneall rounding out the top three for the day.
Although he eventually secured what was a comfortable Heat win over Bates and McLoughlin, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the Kiwi, who benefited from some mishaps to fellow title rivals Scott Pedder and Harry Bates.
Harry was the first of the two to suffer. After a strong win on the opening stage, the reigning champion and co-driver Coral Taylor hit a concrete drain in the second stage that forced their Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia GR Yaris Rally 2 to lose a wheel and miss the morning’s remaining two stages.
Harry’s incident on stage two gifted Pedder and Macneall the lead, and the pair made sure of it with two consecutive wins in their newly acquired Skoda Fabia Rally 2. However, a puncture on the morning’s final stage saw them lose a minute and drop down the order.
That catapulted Paddon and Kennard into top spot as a reward for their consistency, but only by just over 10 seconds at the midday service as Lewis and McLoughlin charged to a five-second win on Stage four.
Remarkably, it took until the afternoon’s fifth stage for Paddon and Kennard to get their first stage win of the day, but the 2024 European Rally Championship winners didn’t look back once they hit the mark—winning the next three stages to extend their lead out to 35 seconds over Lewis and McLoughlin.
“”It hasn’t been an easy day for us for sure but obviously we got the result so, that’s pleasing. We certainly had to work for it this morning,” Paddon said.
“A few things sort of went against us. This afternoon, it sort of started to come back and the feeling was good but, obviously, as we can see, the pace is hot over here, so we’re looking forward to the challenge, which I’m sure is going to be all season long.
“That’s one day down. And there is obviously still another day to go. Tomorrow is very different in terms of the conditions and everything again.
“We start from scratch and reset and hopefully we can pick up where we left off this afternoon.
“I probably prefer tomorrow’s stages. it’s just a little bit easier to read and sort of gauge the conditions a little bit, but still challenging. In the end, we learned some stuff today with ourselves and the pace is in the car, so I’m sure we can take that forward to tomorrow.”
The Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia duo managed to finish the day off with a win and solidified second place in the Heat over Pedder and Macneall, who limped home after a minor incident on the day’s last stage.
A further 30 seconds off the Victorian driver was Alex Rullo and Steve Glenney, who were highly consistent across the day, while rising star Josh Wiedman and new co-driver KJ Miller made up the top five – an incredible effort from the young pairing.
Not only was Wiedman’s good driving rewarded with an outright top five finish, but it also secured him WOLF Production Cup honours, beating Andrew Penny and co-driver Rhys Llewellyn by more than four minutes in the class.
Penny and Llewellyn didn’t end the Heat empty-handed, as the Subaru Impreza pilots finished with the ARC 4WD Classic Cup Heat win and an outright top 10 finish of seventh.
Splitting Wiedman and Penny on the outright Heat standings were ARC 2WD Cup winner Tony Sullens and Kaylie Newell in their Citroen DS3, while the Mitsubishi Evo 8 of Jody Mill and James Ford finished eighth.
Taking out the final two spots in the top 10 were ARC Junior Cup winners Jackson Long and Damian Long and cup rivals Jaidyn and Lucy Gluskie.
Following their big mishap in the morning, Harry and Taylor had a much better afternoon, recording a trio of runner-up stage wins. The reigning champions ended up finishing the Heat between the two Stilling entries, with Trevor Stilling and Clare Buccini taking out the ARC 2WD for the winner.
The action resumes tomorrow with another eight stages awaiting crews for Heat 2 of the Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia Rally of Canberra on 21-23 March.
