Paradoxically, while next weekend’s Otago Rally has attracted a quality international as well as national entry, three of the top four seeds for the main event — Hayden Paddon, Emma Gilmour and Ari Pettigrew — are Otago-based drivers. David Thomson explains what’s going on, and why our part of the world has become home-base for top-flight rallying talent.
For most of rallying’s half century or so as a sport in New Zealand, Otago drivers have been notable more for their absence from the top-echelons of the sport than their presence.
Yes, there have been several respectable performers over the years. But until comparatively recently if you hailed from south of the Waitaki, and wanted to support a local rally driver good enough to genuinely challenge for regular podium results or even outright wins at national level, you had two choices: consider Southlanders or embrace Cantabrians.
Dunedin born-and-bred, Emma Gilmour was the first Otago driver to break that well-established mould, moving from the rally co-driver to driver’s seat some 20 years ago, and racking up her first national podium finishes within a couple of years. Fast forward to 2023, she’s been a three times national championship runner-up, a national rally round winner and has also enjoyed a varied and successful international career that continues to this day.
Unlike Gilmour, the other two top-seeded Otago drivers — Hayden Paddon and Ari Pettigrew — are immigrants to the province.
Paddon, by a clear margin the greatest rally driver New Zealand has ever produced, hails originally from South Canterbury. He’d already won national rallies and titles and forged his top-line career for Hyundai in the world championship before shifting south to establish Paddon Rallysport — his motor sport preparation and development business — at Highlands Park in Cromwell.
Ari Pettigrew, meantime, is a rising star who was Rangiorabased when he started his rallying career, having cut his teeth grass kart racing. He was just 17 years old when he stunned all and sundry by taking a most unlikely car, a rear-drive BMW 318Ti, to fourth place in the 2016 Catlins Rally. It was only Pettigrew’s second-ever rally.
He progressed to national competition in 2017, but had a horror season of retirements and the odd disappointing finish. After scaling back his programme dramatically for a couple of years, Pettigrew, by now living in Central, had a second crack at national competition in 2021. This time round things clicked; despite running on a shoestring budget, he finished every event he contested, and at season’s end was crowned national junior champion and open two-wheel-drive national champion.
Switching from the BMW to an ex-Greg Murphy Holden Barina AP4 for 2022, Pettigrew made further massive progress. Seeded 13th for Rally Otago, the opening championship round, he came home seventh. At the next championship round, Rally Whangarei, he was third. Further top results, including runner-up honours in Hawke’s Bay, earned him third place in the overall national championship, and another junior rally championship crown.
Paddon had identified Pettigrew as a potential star of the future in 2016 and was instrumental in getting his rallying career back on track in 2021. By then, Pettigrew had moved south to work for Paddon Rallysport in Cromwell, where he has learnt from a master about preparing and running a car so that is both reliable and quick.
Paddon and his team have done a huge amount to release the potential of Pettigrew’s car as well as its driver, and it’s a combination that will remain together for 2023. Pettigrew is seeded third for Rally Otago and with Jason Farmer once again calling the pace notes from the co-driver’s seat.
Emma Gilmour is also looking to harness a little of that Paddon Rallysport magic this season, having contracted the outfit to run her recently acquired Citroen C3 Rally2 car.
The new car and team are both super-smart moves for Gilmour, who should be able to show her true ability again after some recent frustrating seasons in her Suzuki Swift AP4.
Switching cars is a big call for Gilmour given she owns Dunedin’s Suzuki dealership. However, she has made the move with the support of Suzuki New Zealand, who continue to back her rally programme as they have done for the past decade.
As all concerned realise the Swift is now 10 years old. Back in the day, it was one of the first cars in New Zealand to move away from the old Group N production class formula, and in 2016 Gilmour memorably drove it to victory on a national championship round. Fast forward to 2023 though, it is old-tech compared to the latest front-line rally cars.
Gilmour’s focus is different these days too, as professional driving duties with McLaren in the global Extreme E series take precedence over any national championship ambitions. That is why, following Rally Otago, she will miss the next championship round, Rally Whangarei, as it clashes with the second round of the Extreme E series in Scotland.
Speaking of Scotland, there will be a St Andrew’s cross on the side of Gilmour’s car next weekend, marking the presence of experienced Scots navigator Claire Mole in the co-driver’s seat. Gilmour and Mole have become firm friends since teaming up as a driver and codriver combination in Europe in the mid-2000s, and they have competed together on-and-off since.
‘‘I absolutely love rallying, but the reality is you’ve still got to enjoy it. So if you can be rallying with one of your best friends, it’s a pretty special thing to be doing,’’ is how Gilmour put it when she and Mole rallied together in the UK in late-2021.
That’s an equally apt description of the approach Gilmour is taking in Otago Rally 2023.
It is now more than 10 years since she stood on the podium on her home event.
The hunger to make that podium again is still there for Gilmour. With a new car to drive and new team to run it, the confidence she is going to enjoy her rallying is renewed too.
If Pettigrew is a driver out there to show us what more he can do, and Gilmour is a driver keen to remind us of what she can do, where does that leave Hayden Paddon?
For sure, he’s got little to prove. Already a nine-times winner at Otago, it is more than five years since he has been beaten to victory by anyone on a New Zealand national championship rally.
Paddon is sticking with a tried-and-true recipe for success in his enduring partnership with vastly experienced Marlborough-based co-driver John Kennard. It comes as no surprise either that he is behind the wheel of a Hyundai i20 once again.
This particular i20 represents change though, being a new car complying with the same Rally2 international regulations as Gilmour’s Citroen, rather than the car he previously rallied at Otago, which was a local-specification AP4 machine.
Switching to a Rally2 version makes sense for Paddon because he’s driving a near-twin in his European Rally Championship campaign.
The dual NZ -European campaign isn’t entirely straightforward mind; for example, a date clash means Paddon will sacrifice a start in the South Canterbury Rally in mid-June to contest a key European event in Latvia.
Looking to the more immediate future, a questions fans are asking ahead of next weekend is, how will the new i20N compare with the old one for pace?
Having already rallied his new i20 at Rally NZ last year and tested it back-to-back against his AP4 car since then, Paddon is well placed to deliver a response.
The AP4 car, he says, excels in faster stages, whereas the Rally2 machine is much more efficient through the twists and turns.
So, on fast and flowing stages such as the North and East Otago ones that make up Saturday’s opening leg of Rally Otago, the AP4 car may potentially have been quicker. Come Sunday, though, there is every chance of Paddon setting new record times for several stages, including most obviously the super-twisty Waipori Gorge test.
As for the rally finale — over the crests and brows of that internationally renowned Kuri Bush test — Paddon suggests that at this point it is a 50:50 call as to whether the record he set in his AP4 car last year will be bettered by his Rally2 machine.
By the end of next weekend we’ll have the answer.
- David Thomson
