Rally organisers have given Paddon permission to contest the Kuri Bush stage in the Hyundai i20 WRC car in which he won the Argentinian round of the FIA World Rally Championship in 2016.
The history-making car is now permanently in New Zealand.
It will be the first time a WRC car has driven the famed 15.05km rally stage with its fast, cambered lines.
Cromwell-based Paddon holds both the overall and classics stage records for Kuri Bush.
His 2023 time of 7min 12.8sec in his NZRC-winning Hyundai Rally 2 is the overall record with an average speed of 125.18kmh.
In 2015, driving a Ford Escort BDA, he set a time for Kuri Bush of 7min 52.7sec which has not yet been bettered by any of the international guest drivers who delight Otago Classic Rally fans each year.
Paddon is also competing in the whole rally, driving a BDA in the Otago Classic Rally category, where his battle with Northern Irish rally star Kris Meeke is expected to attract plenty of attention.
Driving a BDA, Meeke delivered a dominant and popular win in last year’s Otago Classic Rally, plus finished seventh overall against the New Zealand Rally Championship competitors.
Meeke said during a post-event interview he would love to compete against Paddon in a matching BDA at a future event.
Paddon missed the Otago Rally last year, being busy competing in Rally Hungary to start his successful FIA European Rally Championship defence.
He is looking forward more than ever to return to one of his favourite rallies in the world.
"It’s always been a bucket list thing for me to drive a WRC car on Kuri Bush, one of New Zealand’s most famous and hair raising stages," Paddon said.
"We hope to put on a good show for the spectators and see what sort of time the car can do, but at the same time we’ll drive with a degree of caution to not take risks and look after this unique and special car."
Ahead of the event, Rally Otago organisers will confirm roughly when in the running order Paddon and the WRC car will do their timed run through Kuri Bush.
As the final stage of 15 for the event, once Paddon has completed Kuri Bush in the BDA, he will go back to the stage start to jump in the 2016 WRC car for the one-off run through the gravel rally stage.
The Central Machine Hire-sponsored Otago Rally begins with the ceremonial start in the Octagon on Friday, April 4 before the rally action itself takes place to the north and southwest of Dunedin on the following two days over 15 stages and 280 competitive kilometres. — APL
