Video: Hayden Paddon learning rally's 'black arts'

Video: Hayden Paddon learning rally's 'black arts'

That’s Hayden Paddon for you - he achieved his goal of a top five finish at Rally Germany, but he wasn’t happy with the way he did it.

"It’s a good bank of points, but probably we didn’t achieve it in the way that we wanted to," he said.

Tarmac, or the 'black stuff' is the Kiwi’s bête noire. The 29-year-old is much happier on gravel where he is sliding all the time – for him a sealed road where the car only slides once it is past the limit is unnatural.

Combine that with the speed of an event like Rally Germany -  which in one stage has the drivers dancing between concrete barriers designed to stop an Army tank - a WRC car doesn’t stand a chance, and this is far from a happy place.

Despite this, Paddon who now sits third in the Championship says his confidence has increased ahead of the next Tarmac Rally.

“I think, come Corsica, we can be much stronger than what we are here.

"We know the key areas where we struggled here and these types of stages we don’t get in Corsica. We’ve got a lot to look forward to and we’re going to work really hard. I think we can build on this and mount a much stronger challenge up the front.”

And as the clip above shows, even when the roads around the Mosel Vineyards did bite – Paddon and Co-Driver John Kennard still managed to have a laugh.

Newshub.