He’s fizzed by electric, is still chasing the WRC dream, would love nothing better than to secure top spot in the rejuvenated Rally New Zealand and is out to make that Hyundai N road car experience even sweeter.

Hayden Paddon is set to resume his World Rally Championship attack in an i20 N, in this livery.

WHEN his time at the top tier of world rallysport curtailed, life conceivably could have slowed down – instead, Hayden Paddon’s world has never spun faster.

Consider what’s on the go at the moment.

Already under way is another full-blown commitment to snaring a sixth national championship, off to a great start with victory in the recent opener in Otago, a favourite hunting ground.

That NZRC pitch is again with his amazing all-conquering AP4 i20 N that has become a two-in-one toy, through it also being engineered to reconfigure – with the ‘mere’ adjustments of a drivetrain swap and complete suspension and aero revisions – into a 521kW hill climb beast.

Also, there’s ongoing development of that standout world-first electric rally car, based on the Kona sports utility. That’s about to charge into a fresh chapter with a new battery on the way and the green light from motorsport officialdom to compete in certain events ….

On top of this, commitment to a return to international competition, primarily via the WRC2 route (but potentially with a special twist for Rally New Zealand this year). Reinstating a full-time Kiwi presence in the international scene is the ‘five years’ from now’ ideal.

On top of all that? The small matter of the continued development of his daily business, Paddon Motorsport, into a supplier of enhancements for the growing count of N road cars here ….

Somehow, with that going on, he’s still somehow found time to present in relaxed and trademark-friendly at this week’s ground breaker; a first owner gathering organised by Hyundai New Zealand for that tribe of N road car owners.

Set to become an annual event, the April 27 track day at Hampton Downs kept this brand ambassador and all-round-good-guy on the hop. Meeting, driving and swapping notes with fans, signing copies of Driven: My Story - his at-times searingly honest biographical account of his life and those times in WRC. And, yes, also somehow putting aside a few minutes for this interview. Talk about Mr Unstoppable. I do hope he also had lunch.

paddon’s new zealand rally championship defence fight is already under way, with victory in the opening otago rally.

So, is this a man who needs more hours in the day? Paddon laughs at the idea. “That and a bigger garage,” he jokes.

World Rally Championship. Been there, done that. Doing it again.

The news fans long wanted to hear came in March; the ex-Hyundai factory driver will compete on a WRC event for the first time in almost three years.

The deal, with significant support from Hyundai New Zealand, is to compete in the competition’s second-tier, WRC2.

The idea is for our man to contest selected events this year in a Hyundai i20 N Rally2 car currently being built in Germany, by the Hyundai motorsport division that employed him for five years until the end of 2018, with a view to competing full-time in the championship in 2023 to secure the WRC2 title.

It’s a huge deal but, when speaking to MotoringNZ.com, he reveals a bigger bombshell.

Paddon’s desire for outright victory in Rally New Zealand is well-known. Likewise, his absolute commitment to run in the 2022 event, the first in 10 years with world championship status.

But what will he drive? Maybe, just maybe, it could be the Hyundai works squad’s most explosive weapon.

New Zealand’s brightest rallying star is not overplaying the idea of a one-off appearance with the works team in the latest full-blown hybrid i20 N WRC car.

paddon is most likely to take on rally new zealand in the new wrc2 car (above) but the potential he could make a one-off appearance in the top-tier WRC machine (below) isn’t off the table.

He enforces it is still far more likely he will attack the September 29-October 2 world championship round as has been announced, in that privateer Hyundai i20.

However, he says the possibility he and his evergreen co-driver, John Kennard, might race with the top tier team as an additional element has been put on the table by his team and its backers.

“My goal in rallying was to try and be obviously a world champion and, okay, that's probably gone now. We're trying to be WRC2 world champion.

“My next best thing I'd love to achieve is to win my home WRC rally. Rally NZ is back as a WRC event after 10 years, so that makes for a possibility. Now it's just trying to get yourself into the right equipment.”

The ‘right’ equipment is definitely the new WRC formula. With a 100kW electric motor and biofuel-fed 1.6 litre turbocharged four-cylinder combustion engine, the Hyundai, Ford and Toyota works cars are the fastest ever to run in WRC. The combined power of over 372kW is an output not seen since the 1980s, with Group B.

Paddon is confident of doing well in NZ; he’s raced the rally route multiple times. Just two of the current WRC drivers, one being former team-mate Thierry Neuville of Belgium, have experienced NZ gravel.

But he’s a realist. As good as the WRC2 is, it’s not a front-runner. He feels he stands good chance of dominating that category, but not overall honours.

“There’s an obvious performance difference between a WRC and a WRC2 car. The WRC2 is one to two seconds slower per kilometre. So it's very, very hard.

“If we're here in a WRC2 car, the goal is to win WRC2 for this round. Beyond that it depends what the others do up the front.

another project for Hayden Paddon Motorsport is providing enhancements for Hyundai N road cars.

“The personal, passionate side of me goes, ‘I want to win Rally New Zealand.’ I want to have that chance. I'll do everything to try and make that possible from my side.

“There’s also the realistic side of me that goes ‘hey, look, I know what it's like, it's all about seat time.’ I’ve been out of that level for a couple of years. It'll be really, really tough, but stranger things do happen.

“I know the stages off the back of my hand. So, there’s that, the element of Kiwi determination and I've got a point to prove.

“I think that can help overcome the lack of seat time that we would have had. If an opportunity does come and I’m able to get a good test then I think I can be competitive.”

The challenge cannot be understated. He’s been off the international scene for a while and world rallying has changed in that period. He was set for a four-round WRC programme – Portugal, Sardinia, Finland and New Zealand – at the wheel of a customer i20 Coupe WRC in 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic scuppered that. Therefore, his last international was Rally GB in 2019, driving for Ford-aligned M-Sport in an R5 Fiesta.

As of this year, a new era. To say the electric impetus patently makes the WRC model ‘different’ to those he enjoyed as a Hyundai factory driver is a classic understatement.

Yet Paddon’s standing as NZ’s most successful rally driver both nationally and internationally, with an outright round win, eight podiums and more than 40 stage wins in WRC obviously counts for something.

Also, he can look to the efforts of France’s Sebastien Loeb and Finn Esapekka Lappi, two stars of the past era who adjusted brilliantly to the tech, despite little prep, on return from sabbaticals.

Paddon’s fanbase is impressively loyal. And it doesn’t just restrict to NZ.

The season-opening Monte Carlo rally was the first event in more than a year for nine-time world champ Loeb, 47, yet he won for Ford while Lappi finished third with Toyota.

Loeb’s win made him the championship’s oldest winner and reinforces a point Paddon makes: Experience counts.

“A beauty of rallying is that it is built on experience. A lot of the guys in WRC are my age, some older. I wouldn't be embarking on this project if I didn't feel like I still had it because otherwise it's a waste of time, money and effort.

“I feel like I'm a much more complete driver now, more so on the mental side of things. I feel like I'm in a really good place.”

To the WRC2 campaign. Paddon will potentially be the first privateer in the i20 N Rally2 car, which will be run by his own team.

They’ll debut in Latvia, in early July. After that comes Estonia, a WRC round two weeks later, then Finland three weeks after that.

“We've picked three fast gravel events, all relatively close though there’s a lot of travel.

“We go over for 60 days and we are pretty much going to do it the Kiwi way. We’re working with another team over there for the trucks and logistics and things. But we'll literally prep the car on the side of the road.”

Then it’ll be all about getting the car back to NZ, a huge logistical challenge with the cost and limitations on international freight.

Two overseas’ events in November are on the hit list; Japan – which the WRC2 car might contest – and the Asia-Pacific final at Coffs Harbour, Australia, which at this point is more likely to involve the AP4 car, which after six seasons remains a category barometer.

“It has been an amazing car with reliability that is testament to the work the team is doing. We've done so much development on that car; nothing on it is the same as what it had six years ago. I just love driving it.”

Nonetheless, it likely has just one more season before retirement and then the focus changes.

The incredibly ambitious undertaking to create the Kona EV has been vital in “building up our team, building up the personnel, the experience, and the business side, which is building to support the sporting side.

“Without all that … we wouldn't be in a position to take our team now to WRC2. They’ve been lots of moving pieces trying to put the puzzle together.”

An equally important project driver, though, is conviction about electric being as much a future for this motorsport as it patently will be for daily motoring.

Assistance from STARD, an Austria-based specialist that has been developing electric-driven competition cars for 10 years, was vital to the Kona project. But make no mistake, this is an example of Kiwi-can-do. Local brains have fathomed how to make the car work, not least in developing incredibly complex power management systems. Paddon believes his team’s expertise in that field is now world-class.

the Kona EV has been a 10,000 man-hour project - with impressive outcome.

At present, the car is awaiting a 50kW battery, packing double the energy capacity of the original unit but at a price: $322,000.

Swapping out is unlikely to make the car faster – and doesn’t need to. This is a model that already sets the pace with electric motors and two-speed transmissions front and rear. Each motor has peak power of 200kW and about 360Nm of torque. At release, the car geared to reach 240kmh and accelerate from 0-100kmh in a little over three seconds.

What the new battery delivers is greater longevity. It will conceivably give it the impetus to cope with regular-length rally stages, though with need for replenishment to last an entire event.

Paddon has gone away from an initial plan to undertake battery swaps during events on cost and logistical grounds and instead now sees the better potential in fast recharging, eight minutes’ being the target, with a hydrogen-fuelled rig to stay on Green message.

The world motorsport body has made clear the hybrid drivetrains used in WRC are a stepping stone to more intense electrification and Paddon is readying his team for that moment.

“The manufacturers are pouring so much money into top level motor sport and it (the technology) has to be relevant to what they're selling.

WRC’s hybrid models are just interim, paddon believes. The move to more intensively electric is unavoidable, he maintains. The kona will keep ahead of the curve.

“We all love combustion engines, but I could see the sport getting left behind.

“The concept behind this car (the Kona) was to prove a point for the sport, to showcase that EV can work. It's still a work in progress but it has kept us in the forefront overseas and drawn attention to our team.

“At the moment, there's not a lot of rules and regulations in place to allow it to compete. But EV, and hydrogen technology, is going to become more relevant. It's really getting these two paths to connect which might be in just five years.”

Sorting out some aspects of the Kona has been a huge ‘mind screw’. Much he knows about creating combustion engine competition cars product doesn’t necessarily work for electric.

Battery cars being heavier asks for fresh considerations in a multitude of areas, from chassis development and weight distribution to brake and throttle calibrations. The Kona enables as a four-wheel-drive by being also dual motor, with separate transmissions for the front and rear drive.

“Some things we expected to work didn't, and had the complete opposite effect to what we thought would occur.

“But the car is already quicker straight out of the box than the AP4 and has so much more potential. Mechanically-speaking, it’s been amazing.

“If you're building a brand-new combustion-engined rally car, there’s always an accepted degree of teething problems with engines, gearbox, clutches … it’s just part of the process. But this car's been phenomenal in that respect.”

Going to STARD for the batteries was logical. “To go develop your own battery means you're going to have a lot of teething problems. With STARD, we knew it was a proven package. We're representing Hyundai. We needed something we can put in the car that works and is reliable. But the software to actually control how the motors work is completely on us.

“We had to start from scratch with all that. We're still trying to get our head around some stuff.”

now in its sixth season, paddon’s ap4 car has become and astounding barometer … and is also a two-in-one deal, as it can transform into a hillclimb and gravel sprint monster.

An example is a throttle pedal. “With a normal car, full throttle is a hundred percent power.” The electric allows for a ‘staged throttle’. It’ll lend 100 percent in some circumstances, or just 50 percent in others, reactivity depending on the terrain the car is encountering.

“Depending on if its twisty, fast or medium speed, you're using a different part of the throttle because you've got it mapped in different ways. And then, on top of that, you've got your nine different maps for the front gearbox and nine different maps to the rear gearbox.

“Trying to get your head around all that stuff is a big thing … but I love the challenge, to be honest. It's pushing the envelope in terms of how fast you can make a car go.”

The car will be seen more often. “We've got all the safety regulations in place now, that's what took a long time. Basically, we can compete in any hill climbs, any sprints.

“We can’t do rallies but we don’t have the battery to handle that any way. That’s why we have a new battery coming. It’s already 12 months delayed because of the world global issues.

“We're aiming for 40-45 kilometres’ of stage distance on a battery charge.” Not far? “With the AP4 we get 50 kays out of a tank of fuel.” If the team then replenishes the battery in eight minutes, then it’s not much more time than for a traditional remote refuel.

“The whole idea is to get the car to work for a normal rally as a normal car with no special treatment. It might take us four or five minutes longer to refill, but the road sections normally have enough buffer built in to compensate for that.”

As for the expense? “This technology will get cheaper in five years, in time it'll be achievable. We have to be in front of the wave so we have to bite the bullet and go with it. That’s what's helping us as a team to put ourselves on the map. If we wait for it to be more financially viable, then we miss the boat.”

WRC going hybrid this year is laudable, but just a box tick. “They're only doing 500 metres of road section and there’s a bit of a power boost on the stage. That's not enough. They know they need to do more.

“As much as I'm a lover for the purist side, my biggest love is actually for the sport. The sport needs to adjust to new technology and likewise technology to the sport.”

That might mean a rejig of how rallies run, with shorter road sections between stages, to maximise energy use. “When you're doing 200 kilometre road sections to get to the stages and then you're doing all the stages, it (the technology) isn’t going to work for a long time.”

the wrc2 campaign will be undertaken by his new zealand team in the ‘kiwi way’

If he had to pick which gave the biggest thrill - the WRC cars he’s known, the AP4 and the electric?

“In some ways, it's hard to go past a world rally car. They are phenomenal bits of engineering, you can just drive over anything and they are built to handle it.

“Yet in terms of mid-corner speed and balance the EV car is just phenomenal. It's more superior than the WRC. The car is planted, there's no inertia of the chassis. It's creating grip and traction.

“In terms of pure excitement factor, the AP4 is pure adrenaline. You're still shaking when you get out the other end (of a stage).

“The three cars are all very unique in their own ways.”

IMAGES: Richard Bosselman, Jack Smith/Hayden Paddon Motorsport