Rally driver Hayden Paddon has driven his electric car to victory in the Ashley Forest Rallysprint in North Canterbury.
Hayden Paddon Photo: PHOTOSPORT
At just its second event, the all-electric Hyundai Kona EV developed and run by Paddon Rallysport, showed it's a force to be reckoned with as Paddon battled with another former Ashley Forest winner Rotorua's Sloan Cox in a Mitsubishi.
While road conditions weren't conductive to the Cromwell-based Paddon being able to better his record time of 52.77 seconds that he set in his Hyundai i20 AP4 rally car in 2019, he was very happy to come away with the win in the Kona EV.
Running in the unlimited 4WD category, Paddon's winning time of 55.64 seconds was enough to beat Cox's time of 55.92 seconds in the final run.
Neil Webb in a Mitsubishi was third.
Paddon says: "We had some challenges and it's not as straightforward as you'd normally expect on an event like this in terms of managing the car, the battery, and the software.
"That makes the win even more rewarding for the team when we've been up against some of the fastest hillclimb cars in New Zealand like Sloan's.
He delivered a great performance so for an electric car to win is something to be proud of.
"Part of our learning curve with the electric technology is about how to extract the best performance in an efficient way.
"We were trying to draw quite a bit of power out of the car which is designed as a rally car, that increased running temperatures somewhat so it's about trying to manage those temperatures.
Next up for the Hyundai Kona EV is a series of demonstration runs at Rally New Zealand at the end of the month.
Paddon will run his Hyundai i20 N Rally2 car at Rally New Zealand.