Quote Originally Posted by janvanvurpa View Post
After all he did win overall just a few years ago in an Appendix K Historic Escort on those same roads.
Overall. On carbs with H pattern gearbox. Ad rear leaf springs..On those roads which seem to be perfect for powerful 4wd turbocharged cars. And 3 other old 2wd cars were in the top 12..

It says something about the level of the field....

Sure I love the old cars but.............
Results for the event, along with who Paddon's opposition were and what they drove, is available on http://chrissport.co.nz. Basically there were a couple of R5s and a whole lot of AP4/AP4+ cars in the field the same as Paddon's AP4+. The difference is that all of NZ's drivers are amateurs who in a year have less seat time than Paddon was getting in any given month while he was a contracted Hyundai driver. That experience (along with talent) means that Paddon has built a car to the same rules as his competitors but, in all likelihood, has used his experience to produce a setup which is faster than any other car in the field. Then he's used his experience and talent to drive the car to the limit all day every day. Watching the in-car footage Paddon is only ever in one of two modes - on the throttle or on the brakes. His competition spend much more time off both pedals letting the car settle into a corner before putting the power back on. The biggest thing that shows the gulf in experience is in the post-event interviews where the 2nd and 3rd placed drivers (Hunt and Turner) were both wide-eyed about how much time their cars were in the air on the roller-coaster final stage and how exhilarating it was, while Paddon treated it as just another day at the office.

With his effort in the BDA in 2015, Paddon was a little flattered by having the top two drivers that year (Ben Hunt, who I would say is NZ's second fastest active competitor, and Ken Block) both strike problems early in the event. He was over half a minute behind those two after 3 stages and wouldn't have been near them them in a straight fight. To put it in perspective Mads Ostberg drove a similar BDA in this year's event and won the Classics division after a trouble-free drive, yet he finished over 4 minutes behind the same driver (Phil Campbell) who Paddon beat for that 2015 win.

Probably the best indicator of how good Paddon's performance was this year isn't that he won by over 7 minutes but that he did so by beating every stage record he set in the same car last year.