Hayden Paddon: Win at Rally Whangarei

So we have completed a successful Rally of Whangarei, winning all of 8 the stages today and increasing our overall NZRC victory to over 4 minutes.

Changeable weather again made it a challenging day and the changing grip levels kept us our toes. It was a lot of fun sliding around on some of the best roads in the world, and we really enjoyed a battle with Richard Mason as well. We had no major problems today other than a sticking throttle this afternoon which made for some hair raising moments on the slippery roads.

Although not classified in the International section of the rally, we were also over 3 minutes ahead of APRC leader Esapekka Lappi in his Skoda and the rest of the international teams. It was great to go head to head with Lappi and I am already looking forward to our next encounter in Finland.

Our maximum points haul from the weekend along with the power stage win give us 88 points, 26 points clear of Richard Mason with Ben Hunt third.

A really enjoyable weekend and thank you to everyone for their support. A huge thanks to everyone that helped to make this weekend possible including our awesome team, Dad, John, Math, Neil, AD and Coxy. Also a huge thanks to Katie and Kate who did a great job keeping you all up to date over the weekend. Our Dunlop tyres also worked really well throughout the weekend in the changeable conditions. Our team mate and sponsor Tony from Stadium Cars also had a great event in his BDA escort, finishing 2nd in class. Unfortunately our protege David Holder had a mishap on stage 1 which put him out of the event, but his splits up to that point against the other Fiesta's was very impressive.

We hope to have some news over the next week to what our next event will be before we head to Europe for the start of our WRC 2 campaign in Finland. We will keep you posted. You can also see our photos and video from the weekend at www.facebook.com/haydenpaddonwrc.