\u201cOur expectations are clear: to do the best job we can to support Hyundai, Thierry and Adrien in their respective championships, and making sure we are collecting as many manufacturers\u2019 points as possible at the end of the weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel I am a very different driver compared to eight years ago and the experience I have gained all around the world in different championships puts me in a good place to put that experience to use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since last racing in the WRC, Paddon has claimed two European rally titles as well as this year\u2019s Australian Rally Championship crown.<\/p>\n
During his time in WRC, Paddon clinched eight podium finishes and won the Rally Argentina in 2016.<\/p>\n
Hyundai Motorsport WRC sporting director Andrew Wheatley said: \u201cWe\u2019re delighted to confirm our line-up for the 2026 FIA WRC season, which will see Thierry and Adrien compete in every round with a trio of very experienced and competitive crews sharing our third entry.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing in Dani, EP and Hayden enables us to call upon their individual strengths to support our manufacturers\u2019 title ambitions next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a difficult decision to make \u2013 whether to opt for experience and consistency, or bring in a rising star and nurture them. However, we are in the last year of the Rally1 technical regulations and we believe the right path is to bring in drivers with knowledge of the car and the team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOur expectations are clear: to do the best job we can to support Hyundai, Thierry and Adrien in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,18239,19552,110224,63787,36567,5812,111,139,69,110223,16237,1527,13382,213,61,377,87700,80],"class_list":["post-170339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-championship","tag-driver","tag-eightyear","tag-hayden","tag-hiatus","tag-make","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paddon","tag-rally","tag-return","tag-returning","tag-sports","tag-to","tag-world","tag-wrc","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170339","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=170339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}