And he won\u2019t have to wait long. Next month\u2019s Monte Carlo Rally marks his full factory WRC return since finishing second at the 2018 Rally Australia. Here\u2019s some numbers on the intervening seven years: he\u2019s started 65 rallies and won 11 titles (and that includes 2020, when Covid restrictions meant he only did two events).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never given up with all the programs we\u2019ve been doing over the last eight years all over the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is massive. It\u2019s a pinch yourself moment to think that eight years after we were last in the WRC, we\u2019re going back. That\u2019s pretty unheard of. So many people believed in us for so many years. Of course, we\u2019re going to take this opportunity with both hands and do the best job we can and see what we can make of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to see our loyalty to the Hyundai brand, which started 12 years ago, has helped create this opportunity. I\u2019m hugely thankful to so many people to make this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paddon\u2019s under no illusions about the task in hand. When he won the 2016 Rally Argentina, he was, effectively Hyundai\u2019s team leader and a driver looking more and more like a world championship challenger. Now, it\u2019s different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And he won\u2019t have to wait long. Next month\u2019s Monte Carlo Rally marks his full factory WRC return…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[109840,34547,110122,111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-170003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-hayden-paddon","9":"tag-hyundai","10":"tag-john-kennard","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}