Hyundai factory rally driver Hayden Paddon has had a rough month in the FIA World Rally Championship. At Rally Portugal three weeks ago, the New Zealand native careened off a forest road in his Hyundai i20 with the subsequent crash and fire burning his car to the axles. Paddon got a fresh start at Rally Sardinia on the Italian island of Sardinia and while he was a bit lacking in pace, things got bad on Stage 7 when he made a mistake at a corner where the road surface transitioned from pavement to gravel. The Hyundai slid off the road at the transition and then pitched nose-down into a gulley.
When the car came to rest, Paddon and his co-driver John Kennard were both fine, but the i20 was too banged up to carry on. One entire corner of the suspension had ripped out with the suspension upright and wheel all still in one piece. These last two disastrous ends to Paddon’s rallies have come immediately following his first WRC victory in Argentina. The news wasn’t all bad for Hyundai, however. Paddon’s teammate Thierry Neuville led the rally into Sunday by a handful of seconds and the Belgian managed to stretch that to a convincing 24-second win over Jari-Matti Latvala. That was Neuville’s second career win and only the third ever for Hyundai in WRC competition.
