Words: Kyle Cassidy
Published 7 April 2026
Hayden Paddon and John Kennard will take part in this weekend’s Croatia Rally running from 9 to 12 April in the team’s third Hyundai i20N Rally1 car.
The pair had a rushed lead up to their return to the FIA World Rally Championship in Monte Carlo, but Paddon says the feeling going into this rally is a lot more ‘normal’.
“Despite it being a rally we’ve never done before, we’re relaxed and motivated,” says Paddon.
The Croatia Rally is a tarmac event and has several changes from earlier editions, the route moving to coastal roads and mountain passes of the Kvarner Gulf and Istria regions. The rally base shifts from Zagreb to the Adriatic Sea port city of Rijeka. With 20 special stages and around 300 competitive kilometres the rally also features a service park at the historic Grobnik Circuit, near Rijeka.
“From our homework, it looks quite a technical rally,” says Paddon. “There are many narrow stages, generally medium to fast-paced. The unique challenge with this event looks to be how much cutting there will be on the road edges, with the potential for dirt, mud and stones to be pulled onto the tarmac, affecting the grip.
“For Friday’s four repeated stages, we will be the last Rally1 car on the road, so the potential cutting pollution will be a big disadvantage. But we’re prepared for that – there’s nothing we can do other than deal with it really, so day one is more about damage limitation before we try to recover for Saturday and Sunday’s stages when we are reseeded with a better road position.”
Having had the opportunity to spend more time with Hyundai Motorsport in Europe over the past couple of months, Paddon says he’s feeling more comfortable in the car but that there’s still plenty to learn.
“Because of the WRC regulations, we are very limited on how much testing we get, and we won’t get a proper pre-event test in Croatia. To help the team, the time we have had in the car was utilised in a way that we didn’t use up the team’s official test days. So while it’s still good mileage for us, it does mean we don’t get to drive in comparable conditions until the rally itself. But that’s a challenge we are up for and we’re as ready as we can be. The target is to be a lot more competitive and be closer to our teammates in terms of pace.”
