Eventful Czech rally sees Paddon extend ERC lead

New Zealanders Hayden Paddon and John Kennard have extended their lead in the 2024 FIA European Rally Championship, despite finishing in a relatively low position of 13th at Barum Czech Rally Zlín, which ran 16 to 18 August.

The Kiwis always knew the sixth ERC event would be challenging given the bumpy tarmac stages with unpredictable grip which were made even more unpredictable with the arrival of forecast rain showers.

Tenth fastest in Friday night’s late running of the hugely popular Zlín superspecial stage, they then came through Saturday morning’s four stages holding seventh place overall and 13 seconds off their main championship rival, Frenchman Mathieu Franceschi.

“We always knew it was going to be tough as the Czech Rally is one of the most challenging on the ERC calendar,” says Paddon. “We focused on trying to have a clean rally and make no mistakes, thinking about our own game.

“It was all going reasonably smoothly until a big rain shower on Saturday afternoon. We had a couple of rain tyres in the car so put them on, then unfortunately had two punctures in the same stage (SS7). We stopped to change the first puncture but later in the stage had another puncture which we had to drive out on. That cost us the best part of four minutes and dropped us down to 18th in the standings and out of the points.”

Throughout Sunday’s six tarmac tests, the pair fought their way back up the leaderboard, improving a position stage by stage until they held 13th place by the rally’s end to get back into a points-earning position. The third fastest time on the bonus points-earning power stage netted them a very welcome three extra points. Paddon now has 95 points to Franceschi’s 82 with two rounds to go.

“Sunday was all about damage limitation,” says Paddon, “as we tried to get back into the points for the top 15 finishers. We were able to do that which was great. We also pushed as hard as we could on the power stage to get some bonus points which we were also able to do – third place on the power stage was a good result to come away with. Considering Franchesci’s retirement, which is obviously very unfortunate for him and not what we want to see for any of our competitors, but it puts us in the position where we were able to salvage some points from the weekend and take the positive of extending our championship lead.”

Next up is the 30 August to 1 September running of Rali Ceredigion in Wales. It’s an event Paddon has done once before but in a different car and with a different team and co-driver, so there’s plenty to work on as he strives to secure his second ERC title.

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