Hayden Paddon: WRC Rally Germany

After a relatively short period since our last rally in Finland it’s now time for Rally Germany and back onto the tarmac. The past two weeks have been very busy with preparation and training. We are feeling eager and ready to go this weekend, picking up from where we left off in Finland.

Our small test last week in Austria was good, and the feeling with the Skoda on tarmac is very positive. Although, only a 50km test it gave me time to acclimatise to the Skoda again and the smooth non-aggressive driving style needed for tarmac. We are lucky with our team, as BRR have a lot of set-up information and experience of this event – meaning we don’t have to make too many changes to the car and instead can focus on the driving.

We are half way through the recce here and despite competing in this rally in 2010, we are having to write all our notes from scratch as we have not done any of these stages before. So far this has been going well and while the roads are fast, they are also very technical amongst the vineyards – John is right at home! The roads are also a little overgrown this year from the surrounding natives making the roads seem narrower than in the past.

Again there is tough competition here this weekend and we will have our work cutout against the R5 and RRC cars, but of course we will be pushing to fight at the top. We expect Robert Kubica to be the bench mark but we also have a good bench mark in local Sepp Wiegand, who is driving a factory Skoda S2000.

We will keep you posted throughout the rally or you can stay up to date with all our updates and videos at www.facebook.com/haydenpaddonwrc or see live results at www.wrc.com or www.irallylive.com. The rally starts on Thursday afternoon here in Germany with 2 stages late in the evening before the first full day of competition starts Friday.