Mitsubishi battle at Rally Hawke’s Bay

Today’s first day of the Tomoana Warehousing Rally Hawke’s Bay see’s three Mitsubishi’s heading the Vantage Aluminium Joinery New Zealand Rally Championship field.

Geraldine’s Hayden Paddon and co-driver John Kennard front the 23-strong field with Christchurch’s Chris West and Garry Cowan 47 seconds behind after six gravel stages in the Wairoa region.

Paddon extends his lead in the series to 28 points over West, with Hawke’s Bay local Stewart Taylor elevated to third following the retirement of Subaru’s Richard and Sara Mason when they suffered transmission failure in the fifth stage.

Five Mitsubishi Lancer EVO 9’s are followed by Subaru driver Emma Gilmour in sixth position.

Light rain early in the day did little to dampen the out-front pace, as Paddon took an opening stage advantage.  There was doubt the current championship points leader would start the rally – his car and transporter stranded in the South Island due to bad weather cancelling the transport ferry.  Having to walk over the start ramp on the Friday evening, the arrival of the transporter in the early hours was a pleasant surprise for the 21-year old when he awoke to start the day’s competition.

“The first stage of the rally we started hot out of the box, said Paddon. “We arrived at service with a good 24 second lead to make everyone play catch up – which had been our game plan from the start.”

“While there was a clean line on the road in the repeat loop, it had rivers running down the middle and a lot of slippery mud.  We often aquaplaned through corners and struggled a bit to get confidence.”

With a number of cars succumbing to conditions – leading two-wheel drive honours went to former local Patrick Malley in the Ford Fiesta – ninth overall.  Nearly a minute behind, Palmerston North’s Bert Murray was second two-wheel drive in the Mazda RX7 to take an early lead in the classic field after a long battle with current championship points leader Rob Wylie in the Nissan 240RS.

Other retirements included Tauranga’s Callum McInnes who slipped off the road, plus five of the two-wheel championship cars.  Leading Kiwi-2 driver Aaron Cook had his overall lead pruned by 32 points when he got stuck off the road near the finish of the last test.

With five stages totalling 100km to complete on Sunday – atrocious weather predicted to sweep the country started to make its presence felt as the crews returned to Napier for the overnight stop.

Departing at 7:20am, the scheduled 3:55pm finish ceremony will be held next to Napier’s aquarium along Marine Parade.

Ends.

Results - provisional

Day one Tomoana Warehousing Rally Hawke’s Bay - round four of the Vantage Aluminium Joinery New Zealand Rally Championship (top-ten)