Paddon and Kennard contest the event for the fourth time, providing a welcome level of experience to balance against the fact it’s the New Zealander’s first tarmac event in the Hyundai i20 WRC car.
It is the season’s only mixed surface event with Friday’s opening leg predominantly gravel and the second and third legs entirely asphalt.
“We were lucky to have debuted in a WRC car here last year, so that experience will help us a lot as John and I have good pace notes that we have worked on over the last couple of weeks.
“Also, having the gravel stages on day one this year will make the transition easier – it’s easier to go from gravel to tarmac in terms of your driving compared to vice-versa.”
With four strong finishes in the four events he’s contested under the Hyundai Motorsport N banner this year, Paddon is maintaining his focus on achieving a credible result in Spain.
“This will be our first tarmac rally with the Hyundai i20 WRC, so we are a little behind Thierry (Neuville) and Dani (Sordo) who have both recently done two tarmac events in Germany [with a historic 1-2 finish for Hyundai] and France and are both regarded as tarmac specialists.
“[We] finished eighth here last year on our WRC debut – earlier attempts didn’t always deliver good results.
“So we would like to challenge to be in the top seven, while keeping in mind that with 16 WRC entrants, the competition here is huge. There’s no doubt our two team-mates are perfect benchmarks against which to judge our performance.”
“The biggest change with the car is the new Michelin tarmac tyres which have been designed to work in the wet and dry.
“During our recent one-day test, the performance of the tyre impressed me, but it is certainly moving around more which means we are sliding more, so we have had to make some chassis adjustments.”
Based in Salou, the event starts with the first special stage an evening street stage on roads that hosted the Spanish Grand Prix Formula One race four times in Barcelona.