Famous Five... WRC Winning Nations

France leads the way, with 18 winners, followed by Finland with 14 and Sweden with 10. Britain has had four drivers stand atop a podium, thanks to the exploits of Roger Clark, Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Kris Meeke.

With 29-year-old Paddon racking up that milestone moment, we wondered which other nations have had just one representative. A bit of a trawl through the archive reveals there are five such countries.

Argentina – Jorge Recalde

Jorge Recalde was a bit of a hero in his native Argentina, flying the flag for the plucky privateer during a 20-year WRC career. On his day of days, he was armed with a factory Group A Lancia Delta Integrale for his home rally in 1988, in place of his self-run Group N machine. Teamed with Miki Biasion, who had already won four times that year, Recalde showed the Italian a clean pair of heels in the latter part of the 29-stage event to come home 3m35s ahead and record his only career win. Recalde died, aged just 49, after a heart attack in March 2001.

Canada – Walter Boyce

Walter Boyce only contested six WRC events between 1973 and 1986 – and all in North America. His only victory came in his very first event, the Press On Regardless Rally in the first year of WRC competition, 1973. Co-driven by Doug Woods, Boyce guided a humble Toyota Corolla to a 24-minute win over the Volvo 142S of local driver Jim Walker in the 79-stage United States event. He took the lead after the first stage and held it throughout to guarantee a bit of Canadian rally history.  

Estonia – Markko Märtin

One of Estonia’s most successful motorsport personalities, Märtin was a fully-fledged factory driver with Subaru, Ford and Peugeot. He made his WRC debut in 1997 in a privately entered Toyota Celica and soon got onto the big teams’ radars. A lacklustre year with Subaru in 2001 was followed by a move to Ford. He spent three years with Malcolm Wilson’s operation and joined the winners’ circle in the Acropolis Rally in 2003 aboard the Focus RS WRC. He followed that up with victory in Finland and took three more wins – in Mexico, Corsica and Catalunya – in 2004. A move to Peugeot in 2005 netted four podium finishes but ended in tragedy when Märtin crashed during Wales Rally GB. His long-time British co-driver, Michael ‘Beef’ Park, was killed in the accident and Märtin would never again compete in the WRC.

Japan – Kenjiro Shinozuka

The only Japanese driver to win in the WRC contested 20 events between 1976 and 1997, all but one of them aboard Mitsubishi Lancers and Galants. He was something of a specialist in the African enduros, the Safari and Ivory Coast Rallies. In eight appearances in the Safari, he finished in the top 10 on seven occasions, while in just three attempts at the Ivory Coast event, he crashed out once and won it twice. In 1991, his Ralliart-run Galant VR-4 defeated the similar car of 1990 winner Patrick Tauziac by more than two hours, while a year later, still in a Ralliart Galant VR-4, his advantage over the second-placed Opel Kadett of Bruno Thiry was almost 1h30m. On both occasions, Shinozuka was co-driven by Briton John Meadows.

Portugal – Joaquim Moutinho

The truth is that Portuguese privateer Joaquim Moutinho inherited his only WRC win – in his home event in Portugal – in 1986, after the frontrunning works teams withdrew from the event in the wake of a terrible accident involving spectators. Fellow local Joaquim Santos had crashed his Group B Ford RS200 into the crowd on the opening stage, killing four and injuring many more. As a mark of respect to the dead and injured, the works teams from Audi, Ford, Lancia, MG and Peugeot, as well as a number of privateer teams, withdrew after SS3. That left Moutinho, whose only WRC experience was seven previous attempts at Rally Portugal, to take a subdued win in his Renault 5 Turbo. The tragedy in Portugal, and the death of star driver Henri Toivonen in Corsica less than two months later, contributed to the demise of the spectacular but lethal Group B era of the World Rally Championship.