The pair won both days of the Adelaide Hills Rally in their Hyundai i20 Rally 2 car, earning the maximum 50 points per day to take their respective drivers’ and co-drivers’ championship points totals to 470, 85 points ahead of closest rivals Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin.
"All in all, a pretty good weekend," Paddon said.
"It’s always about managing things, trying to build a gap in the mornings on the first loop, then manage things like tyres in the afternoons.
"A weekend of management is what I’ve called this one in terms of tyres and strategy, and we did what we needed to do to secure the win."
Saturday’s competition on the rolling roads through the Adelaide Hills featured Paddon and Harry Bates claiming three stage wins apiece in the first six stages, Paddon holding the overall lead by just 4.4sec.
Harry Bates then crashed out of the first of four early evening stages. Paddon grabbed one more stage win while Lewis Bates claimed the other three to finish the day 20.7sec adrift of Paddon.
"It was a real shame that Harry had his little off-road excursion," Paddon said.
"It was obviously a close fight, and I think we would have been pushing each other right to the end. With Harry on the side of the road, we sort of backed off a bit in the evening just to look after tyres."
Sunday’s itinerary featured eight stages, Paddon winning five to secure another heat win, 31.6sec ahead of Lewis Bates who secured maximum bonus points by winning the power stage.
The Adelaide Hills Rally was the fifth round of the ARC’s six-round championship, which will finish in Tasmania early next month.
"Being 85 points in front isn’t really a position you like to be in," Paddon said.
"I’d have preferred to either be closer or have the title wrapped up, because then you can go to Tassie and just push. But now, being in this position, we have to finish seventh or better.
You’ll probably hear every little rattle and bang in the car all weekend. It makes it a lot more stressful than it probably should be." — Allied Media
