Motorsport: Paddon sixth as Neuville steals victory

Hayden Paddon in action during Rally Mexico. Photo / Getty Images

Kiwi rally driver Hayden Paddon has finished sixth at Rally Argentina while his Hyundai teammate Thierry Neuville has claimed victory.

The Belgian pipped unlucky Brit Elfyn Evans by 0.7s to win his second successive WRC event. Welshman Evans had led for the majority of the rally but relinquished the lead on the stage in his DMACK Ford and will have to wait for another chance to earn his maiden win.

Victory 🏆 + 5 pts in the Power Stage! Couldn't expect any better result! Big thanks to @HMSGOfficial for the amazing job done this weekend! pic.twitter.com/VkylSXSsvq

— Thierry Neuville (@thierryneuville) April 30, 2017

M-Sport Ford Ott Tanak and Sebastien Ogier were third and fourth respectively while Toyota's Jari-Matti Latvala finished fifth.

Paddon recovered from a first day roll, which cost him in excess of three minutes, to finish sixth and bank a solid haul of points.

He suffered from handling issues on the final day and a loss of power on the power stage.

So it continues... 😕 P6 but nothing more to say. Congrats to @HMSGOfficial & @thierryneuville for another win. Onto the next one.... pic.twitter.com/sw2folia2J

— Hayden Paddon (@HaydenPaddon) April 30, 2017

"A difficult rally," said a disappointed Paddon. "Certainly not the way we were wanted to finish it, we were hoping to maybe to try and go for some power stage points today, but we had another power steering failure which didn't allow us to that.

"Tough rally, start to finish. We had some time in the middle of the rally where we were able to salvage a bit of time, but we were on the back foot for the rest of the rally. Not the best of our last 12 months. Hopefully we can try turn it around sooner rather than later, and get that feeling back of being up near the front."

Neuville took maximum points from the event after winning the power stage while Evans, Tanak, Ogier and Latvala claimed the other bonus points in that order.