Hayden Paddon who most recently won his home rally of Repco Rally New Zealand in the WRC2 class has revealed he is targeting a part-time Rally1 program for the upcoming season.
Paddon has been driving at the top level for some time before but over the past couple of seasons, he´s been without a seat in a factory team, last time in 2018 when he ran also a part-time program with Hyundai Motorsport. So far the kiwi has only one rally win in the WRC when he won the Rally Argentina in 2016.
In 2019 he was set to run a private entered Ford Fiesta WRC in Rally Finland rented from M-Sport Ford but he was involved in a high-speed crash before the event so he had to retire from the rally completely.
So far the kiwi hasn´t announced his 2023 program but he is looking to do a full-season campaign in the WRC2 class and add some selected Rally1 outings to his schedule.
“The perfect season would be a full WRC2 program and some selected Rally1 outings, there are some really good rallies out there where I think we could do very well. Events like Portugal and Sardinia, if Chile’s back or México – those kinds of medium speed, technical rallies where we have experience. Maybe on those events, you can rely a little bit on the running order to offset the fact we haven’t been in the car so much.” Paddon said.
“As I said, the focus is the WRC2 program with Hyundai New Zealand and we’re going to give that everything we’ve got, but it would be perfect if we could find a way into a Rally1 car as well next season.”
