WRC winner Paddon no longer chasing top-level rally return

The former factory Hyundai driver had hoped to return to the WRC after losing his drive with the South Korean marque at the end of 2018, but has been unable to return to top-flight competition since.

The 2016 Rally Argentina winner was set to join M-Sport for selected rounds in Finland and Australia in 2019, although a testing crash ruled him out of the former, while the latter was cancelled due to bushfires in New South Wales.

Paddon had been working on a bid to drive a Rally1 car at his home round in New Zealand last year but the plans failed to come to fruition.

The New Zealander’s name was mentioned as a potential candidate to rejoin Hyundai’s factory outfit for this year following Ott Tanak’s departure to M-Sport, although the 35-year-old confirmed to Motorsport.com that he didn’t enter into any discussions with the team.

Last year Paddon took part in three rounds in WRC2 last year but this year he’s elected to contest rounds in the European Rally Championship, driving a Hyundai i20 Rally2, alongside a programme in his native New Zealand.  

“I’m going to be massively busy with a full European campaign and a New Zealand campaign and a lot of back-to-back events both sides of the world, so I’m probably going to be pretty puffed by the time I get to the end of the year,” Paddon, who won last month’s ERC season opener in Portugal, told Motorsport.com.

“I’m obviously in a different part of my career now, I’m not trying to get back in the WRC. 

“When you are young you do the whole WRC and WRC2 thing to try and get attention but that ship has sailed now obviously, so I have chosen a programme that I will enjoy more and is a little bit more budget-friendly for us. 

“The massive appeal for the ERC is the fact that you can win rallies outright and in WRC2 you are in a class. I like winning so I want to be winning rallies and not just the class. 

“There were never any discussions [with Hyundai for 2023]. I’m a pretty realistic person and when you have been out of the game for four or five years it is so much tougher to get back in. 

“I was pretty dark about the whole WRC thing after it happened in 2019 but I’m in a much happier place in my life now. I like being back in New Zealand and my preference was to stay living there and travel back and forth and I love that we are doing it with our own team.”