Hayden Paddon wins 2016 Rally Argentina

Hayden Paddon
Hayden beat Ogier to clinch the victory

Hayden Paddon of Hyundai Motorsport clinched his maiden WRC victory by winning Rally Argentina. The Flying Kiwi finished 14.3 seconds ahead of championship leader and 3 times WRC champion Sebastian Ogier.

The duo were separated by 2.6 seconds going into the final stage of the rally after Sebastian Ogier put in a stunning performance on the final day of the rally to cut down time deficit of 30 seconds but the talented New Zealander held his nerve to finish the rally with a stage win.

Volkswagen’s Andreas Mikkelsen made two VW’s on the podium with a solid and hard fought 3rd place. The Norwegian drove at a steady pace and was very careful throughout the rally to finish in 3rd ahead of Hyundai's Dani Sordo. Sordo had an uneventful rally and was happy to add to his points tally.

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Mad's Ostberg finished in 5th for the M-sport World rally team. Though Mad's felt at home in his car and had good rhythm on the stages, the times failed to reflect so, meaning that he left Argentina in a perplexed state of mind.

Thierry Neuville had a tough rally after suffering electrical problems with his car on the first day, the Belgian then fought back to finish in a closely contested 6th place. He was followed home by Marcus Ligato in his Citroen DS3. Home hero Ligato had hoped to finish inside the top 5, but insisted that he was happy with the result and vowed to come back stronger next year.

Eric Camilli of M-sport finished in an error free 8th place. The young Frenchmen has endured a tough start to his WRC career after suffering major crashes in the opening 3 rallies.M-Sport’s boss Malcolm Wilson was happy to see Camilli finish the rally and said that the objective for him was to finish without making any big mistakes.

Henning Solberg and Nicolas Fuchs rounded off the top 10 with Nicholas taking the win in WRC 2 category.

Rally Sweden winner, Jari Matti Latvala started the rally on a positive note and was on course to win back to back rallies when his front suspension broke sending him into a barrel role and ending his chances of securing another win. The Finn ended up finishing 16th .

Among other casualties was D-Mack’s Ott Tanak, having suffered alternator belt failure on Day 1 of the rally, the Estonian was unable to fix the problem and had to retire his car on day 1 of the rally with 4 stages still left to run. Tanak joined the rally on day 2 under Rally2 regulations and finished in a lonely 15th place.

Here are the complete results:

POS#DRIVERTIMEDIFF PREVDIFF 1ST
1.20H. PADDON3:40:52.9
2.1S. OGIER3:41:07.2+14.3+14.3
3.9A. MIKKELSEN3:41:58.1+50.9+1:05.2
4.4D. SORDO3:42:10.0+11.9+1:17.1
5.5M. OSTBERG3:45:49.6+3:39.6+4:56.7
6.3T. NEUVILLE3:50:22.4+4:32.8+9:29.5
7.81M. LIGATO3:50:32.1+9.7+9:39.2
8.6E. CAMILLI3:51:08.9+36.8+10:16.0
9.16H. SOLBERG3:51:41.4+32.5+10:48.5
10.42N. FUCHS4:05:35.7+13:54.3+24:42.8
11.88G. PADILLA4:05:41.1+5.4+24:48.2
12.32H. PTASZEK4:10:12.6+4:31.5+29:19.7
13.37L. BERTELLI4:14:16.6+4:04.0+33:23.7
14.34A. AL-KUWARI4:15:26.6+1:10.0+34:33.7
15.12O. TANAK4:18:15.3+2:48.7+37:22.4
16.2J. LATVALA4:23:08.5+4:53.2+42:15.6
17.31E. EVANS4:50:26.0+27:17.5+1:09:33.1
18.61M. FABRE4:53:11.0+2:45.0+1:12:18.1
19.83J. NICOLAS5:05:44.2+12:33.2+1:24:51.3
20.49A. BESTARD POLLETI5:09:37.6+3:53.4+1:28:44.7
21.90F. FRISIERO5:16:17.7+6:40.1+1:35:24.8
22.91F. ALVAREZ CASTELLANO5:28:38.0+12:20.3+1:47:45.1
23.96G. BOTTAZZINI5:44:51.0+16:13.0

+2:03:58.

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Edited by Staff Editor