Ahead of the EROAD Australian Rally Championship season opener at Rally of Canberra, Paddon spoke with Speedcafe at length about his ultimate goal.
The Kiwi wants to make a return to the WRC as a driver, and one day as a team owner.
“I’ve got unfinished business there,” said Paddon.
“I know it’s unrealistic to get a full-time contract again, and that’s certainly not what I’m looking for, but I’d love to go and do it part-time, do some rallies that are to our advantage, whether it be road conditions or other things.
“I’d love the opportunity to stand on the WRC podium again. I know we can’t be world champions, that ship has sailed, but I still feel like I’m driving on a good level – yeah, there’s unfinished business.
“You look at all the guys that are still there, they’re all the guys that we were competing against five or six years ago. You’ve got to have some self-confidence and you don’t know until you try. I just hope that we get one last chance to at least give it another crack.”
Paddon said he has had discussions this year about competing in the WRC but that nothing has come of them yet. However, he would like to compete as early as this season.
With an eye on starting his own team under the new regulations, the 37-year-old is waiting to see what comes from WRC organisers.
“Unfortunately, it’s money really. It’s the only way you can get in there at this stage until these rules come in 2027,” Paddon explained.
“These new rules and regulations, they’ve given an outline of what that might look like and I see some opportunities for us on that, whether it be with our own team or with another team because the costs are reduced or whatever it might be.
“But the reality is we actually haven’t seen the rule book yet, so they’ve said what they wanted it to look like, but until we see a rule book we don’t actually know if it’s achievable or not.”
Paddon’s last start in the WRC at the top level was with Hyundai in 2018 where he finished second in Rally Australia.
It was a statement result from the Kiwi in the season finale, who by then had been dropped from the Korean manufacturer’s line-up for the following year.
Paddon tried to make a return to the WRC with M-Sport and Ford in 2019, but was thwarted in the first instance by a crash while testing in Finland.
Then another attempt to compete in Rally Australia that year was undone by devastating fires in New South Wales, which ultimately ended with the event’s cancellation.
“I think it was all telling us why we shouldn’t be going there. That’s what it felt like,” Paddon said of the Ford deal.
“Yeah, we gave it a go. When we tried to get back and do it on our own accord was about making sure we weren’t sitting back doing nothing and trying to be proactive, but the stars certainly weren’t aligned our way that year.
“The test accident, I still put that down to being an absolute freak accident and then the fires — it just wasn’t meant to be.”
Paddon had a contract as a Hyundai customer on a limited program for 2020 but that was scuppered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, he remains steadfast in his commitment to Hyundai and has no plan to make a WRC return with anyone else imminently.
“It was one thing after another, but we can at least say we didn’t not try,” said Paddon.
“For me at the moment, my commitment is Hyundai, just got to, at the end of the day, people are loyal and backing me, I want to stay loyal to them.
“I always said when we started working with Hyundai like Possum [Bourne] was my idol growing up and part of that was also his relationship with the brand of car that he was with.
“That’s what I looked up to. It was a little bit the same with Collin [McRae] as well, so that’s what I want to do with Hyundai.
“But obviously in the big ugly world of business sometimes it doesn’t always work out that way.
“In saying that, things are not easy in the economy in New Zealand at the moment and Hyundai New Zealand have still stayed behind us this year.
“We’re very fortunate for that because it would have been perhaps easier for them not to be, but we’ve built something over 11 years now. It’d be a shame to put down the rubbish.
“Ideally I’d like it to stay with Hyundai, but hey, you just sometimes never know what happens in business.”
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