28 Jul 2018

Paddon chasing podium in Finland

9:16 am on 28 July 2018

New Zealand rally driver Hayden Paddon is near the top of the leaderboard at the midway stage of WRC's Rally of Finland.

Hayden Paddon competing in the Rally of Poland

Hayden Paddon. Photo: WRC

Paddon is the best of Hyundai's three drivers in fourth place.

He's 36.4 seconds behind the leader - Toyota's Ott tanak.

Citroen's Mads Ostberg is second, 5.8 seconds behind Tanak, while Jari-Matti Latvala is in third.

Championship leader Theirry Neuville, Paddon's team-mate, is at the back of the pack in 10th due to a mistake on the fifth stage.

"We came here expecting to have a bit more speed as we felt this would be more similar to New Zealand roads. They are similar in many respects, but they also have lots of ruts which I'm still struggling with unfortunately," Paddon said.

"A bit of an up and down day, including possibly the worst stage of my life - we almost got stuck on the start line because of some big ruts, then at the finish of the stage, I got confused where the start was and stopped too early.

"So not so good on the stage times today, but we did have a clean day and didn't make any mistakes from a driving perspective.

"Tomorrow we'll try and drive with a bit more confidence and hopefully the times to improve. Still two days to go and more learning to be had."

-RNZ