Paddon heads to Rome aiming for championship gains

As the defending FIA European Rally Champion, Kiwi rally star Hayden Paddon and BRC Racing Team head to Rally di Roma Capitale this week with a clear goal: to protect and, ideally, extend the lead in this year’s championship. Paddon took the 2024 ERC lead at the previous ERC round in Estonia earlier this month and now has 73 points, just ten points ahead of second-placed Frenchman Mattieu Franceschi while Norway’s Mads Ostberg holds third place with 53 points going into this Italian event. Acknowledging his main championship rivals, Paddon says: “Both Mathieu and Mads will be fast, especially Mathieu who has made a big step up this year. In terms of overall rally results, we know the local Italian ERC drivers are very fast as they were last year, but our focus will be on our main rivals for championship points. “We would love to repeat last year’s podium result in Rome but we have seen how competitive the field is this year. It’s definitely going to be a challenge this weekend but extending our championship lead is the key goal.” Paddon and his experienced co-driver John Kennard are the number one seeds for the 26 to 29 July running of the high-speed asphalt rally which is the fifth of eight rounds of this year’s ERC. The pair join their BRC Racing teammates to conduct a short pre-event test with the Hyundai i20 Rally 2 car early this week. “We will utilise last year’s data from this rally alongside what we learnt from Canaries Rally this year to try and find some better settings for the car in these conditions. We need to keep working hard trying to find more performance as other teams and cars are getting faster.” BRC Racing Team Principal Gabriele Rizzo says: “Approaching our home event bring always extra motivations. We know Rally Rome quite well, we have done many times with different drivers and won in 2017. Thinking to the past there is some sadness as for two years we have run Craig Breen here. It’s a challenging rally where again locals drivers are expected to set the benchmark. As a team we are focusing to offer again a trouble-free run to Hayden and John and to unlock some further performance from the car. Hayden has the last year experience and we must capitalize it. It’s the fifth event on eight and there is no margin for mistake, we’ll try to put pressure on our rivals grabbing enough points to extend our lead in the championship.” The rally gets underway on Friday evening with an opening super special stage near Rome’s famed Colosseum, then they tackle 189km of special stages around the rally base in Fiuggi, a thermal spa town southeast of Rome. Most of the stages are the same as last year. Paddon describes the stages as mostly flowing, and slightly bumpy in places. “I enjoy the stages. What makes it unique here, as it was last year, is the weather. We are expecting very hot temps, up to 40 degrees air temp, which makes it one of the hottest rallies we do and looking after tyres in such conditions becomes key.”   Paddon’s 2024 ERC event calendar 12-14 April – Rally Hungary (gravel) 2-4 May – Rally Islas Canarias (asphalt) 13-15 June – Royal Rally of Scandinavia, Sweden (gravel) 5-7 July – Rally Estonia (gravel) 26-28 July – Rally di Roma Capitale, Italy (asphalt) 16-18 August – Barum Czech Rally Zlín (asphalt) 30 August – 1 September – Rali Ceredigion, United Kingdom (asphalt) 11-13 October – Rally Silesia, Poland (asphalt)