Third consecutive ARC win for Paddon and Kennard

Kiwi rally stars Hayden Paddon and John Kennard secured their third win in a row in the 2025 EROAD Australian Rally Championship (ARC) at the Gippsland Rally in eastern Victoria, which ran 22-24 August.

The New Zealanders finished the 216.6 km of competition across two days with a handy margin of one minute, 6.8 seconds over the second-placed crew and defending champions, Harry Bates and Coral Taylor. Run on forestry roads near the town of Heyfield, the rally featured four night stages on Saturday evening, the first time in more than ten years that an ARC event included forest stages in darkness.

Paddon and Kennard had almost a clean sweep of nine stage wins during Saturday’s ten stages to finish the day more than a minute ahead of Bates. Conditions were described as trying with some wet roads and accurate driving required to find the best grip.

Saying the Hyundai i20 N Rally 2 car was running the best it’s been all season thanks to the PRG team’s preparation work, Paddon enjoyed Saturday’s stages.

“We did most of our heavy lifting during the first loop in daylight,” said Paddon. “I really enjoyed the night stages as well, but it was tricky, especially when you are protecting the lead.”

With eight stages to run on Sunday, Paddon’s goal was to preserve his lead and aim for maximum points. Harry Bates and his brother Lewis, who held third place, fought hard all day. While Paddon and Kennard won most of the day’s stages, Harry did secure three stage wins. The Kiwis didn’t stop the pressure, winning the end of day power stage, earn maximum points from this event and extend their championship lead with two rounds left to run.

“It’s been a perfect weekend and a perfect result,” says Paddon. “It’s awesome for PRG come away with maximum points. This being an endurance round means it required a slightly different approach to the first three sprint events. Once we’d built up a lead on day one here, it was a matter of maintaining that through Sunday’s stages knowing we wanted to up the ante on the final power stage for maximum bonus points.

“All in all, the car was a dream to drive all weekend. The team has done an amazing job with the preparation and running it, and John in the car, as always, did an awesome job. What a great way to extend our championship lead and now we try and carry this momentum forward to the next event in Adelaide in October.”

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PRG appreciates the support of their partners including Hyundai New Zealand, Caltex Havoline Oil, Mitre 10 Trade, Winmax Brake Pads, Bar’s Bugs, EROAD, Ben Nevis Station, Wipertech, Design Windows, MITO, Repco, Machinery House, King Gee, KiwiFibre, TrialLite, Hankook, Z Energy, Blaster and Signbiz.