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Day One update: Paddon leads after morning stages

New Zealander Hayden Paddon leads the International Rally of Whangarei by nearly 34 seconds from Indian driver Gaurav Gill with the morning’s first four stages now complete.

Paddon had “a bit of a moment” partway through the morning’s first and longest stage. “We pretty much had all four wheels down a bank, so it was a bit of a reality check and we backed off a bit from there.”

Brendon Reeves, from Australia, holds third place with former World Rally Championship competitor Alister McRae in fourth in the new Proton Super 2000 rally car. Another Kiwi, Emma Gilmour rounds out the top five. Reeves is one minute, seven seconds down on the leader Paddon with McRae just over four seconds behind Reeves. Gilmour has a gap of just 0.4 seconds to McRae.

The morning’s stages have been run in fine, sunny conditions, although the slippery gravelled roads have challenged top seed Japanese driver Katsu Taguchi who said he was struggling with “too much wheel-spin and too much over-steer on the very slippery gravel”. Taguchi’s MRF Tyres team-mate, Gill, selected different tyres, saying: “We started to get rhythm in the third stage and it was a good stage time.”

Paddon said he’s been using a soft compound Pirelli tyre during the morning and they worked well in the middle two stages. “But they overheated a bit in the second half of the first one [Mititai, the event’s longest stage at 33.99 km].”

Among the morning’s retirements was Whangarei hopeful Ben Jagger who went wide on a corner in the first stage, leaving his car beached on a clump of pampas grass. Chris Atkinson in the other Proton was out in the third stage with mechanical issues while another Kiwi Stephen Barker went off the road, damaging his steering. All are expected rejoin tomorrow.

Competitors do a repeat run of all four stages again on Saturday afternoon, before Sunday’s final eight stages.