Frenchman Sebastien Ogier hopes to minimise the risk of punctures as he leads the pack into the penultimate stage of the iconic WRC Safari Rally in Naivasha.
The eight-time champion showed his rivals a clean pair of heels on the opening day of action and had established a double-digit lead just three special stages into this seventh round of the FIA World Rally Championship.
But asked for his thoughts on the challenge ahead, Ogier quipped: “I need some Kenyan gods to help me. Hopefully, they will remain with me a bit longer this weekend.”
“The strategy today (Friday) was all about mitigating the risk of punctures but tomorrow (Saturday) in Soysambu, there will be much rougher sections to go through. But let’s hope tomorrow will be a good day and I definitely know that there are stages we will have to slow down,” he added.
Ogier survived a hybrid unit scare in the late morning run to slice his buffer to just 2.5sec over team-mate Kalle Rovanperä before the midday service in Naivasha.
But that failed to deter Ogier, who gambled by carrying only one spare wheel aboard his Toyota GR Yaris for the repeated afternoon loop.
His weight-saving tactics clearly worked wonders as he romped to a hat-trick of benchmark stage times, ending the day 22.8sec clear of Rovanperä at the sharp end of a Toyota 1-2-3.
“I don’t think it was a gamble, basically, because having a chance to be lighter I was faster anyway, so it paid off. The team was not super comfortable when I made this decision. But I’m glad they let me trust my feelings,” Ogier expounded.
Asked about punctures galore, on the second day in Naivasha, Rovanpera noted: “Puncturing is always the tricky part of Safari, so you need to take care of it and try to be clever. Of course, today wasn’t so rough but tomorrow will be much tougher for the car. Opening the road is not quite easy, so we wasted time trying to clean the roads, but I am happy we have no issues.”
M-Sport Ford drivers Ott Tänak and Pierre-Louis Loubet had a day to forget.
Both lay several minutes back from the lead in seventh and eighth overall after carrying out mid-stage wheel changes, although their second-tier colleague Grégoire Munster gave the British team something to smile about by leading the WRC2 category from Kajetan Kajetanowicz in a Fiesta Rally2.
