•Drivers are steeling themselves to thunder through gnarly routes of the picturesque Great Rift Valley, known to teem with exotic wildlife.
•Defending champion Kalle Rovanpera will renew rivalry with the 2021 winner Sébastien Ogier in a vicious battle on Kenya’s rocky, rutted tracks.
Image: FILE
After all the hype and bubble, the legendary Safari Rally Kenya comes alive on Thursday morning.
The country is about to witness an ultimate slugfest of speed and precision in the high-adrenaline action.
The drivers of the multi-coloured machines are steeling themselves to thunder through gnarly routes of the picturesque Great Rift Valley, known to teem with exotic wildlife.
Defending champion Kalle Rovanpera will renew rivalry with the 2021 winner Sébastien Ogier in a vicious battle on Kenya’s rocky, rutted tracks.
Ogier, a member of the Toyota Gazoo Racing team, has bagged eight titles including the 2021 Safari Rally.
The country holds the iconic event so dearly as testified by the numerous petrol-heads who came out in droves to root for the speed demons as they rumbled off the streets of Nairobi and roared through the Naivasha jungle in the preceding seasons.
There was some measure of excitement in the air after the 2021 championship following the sumptuous news from President Uhuru that Kenya had secured annual hosting rights until the year 2025.
We can only envision what the revelation means for our country. Pundits reckon that the return of Safari Rally Kenya is bound to patch up and inflate the wobbling tire of the country’s tourism sector which had been punctured by a slumping economy and torn further by the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to authoritative statistics, the rally pumped a whopping Sh4bn into the economy in 2020, quite an impressive return vis-a-vis the Sh450 million the government had set aside for the event. Hopefully, we drew some rich lessons which we could use to make significant changes this time around.
There were some glaring setbacks in the past events that the organisers must address including snarl-ups witnessed along the course. Pockets of blatant recklessness that could have easily caused fatalities also came to the fore, raising serious security and safety concerns.
We’d all love to see motorsports enthusiasts jamming the streets and mingling freely to witness the sub-Saharan classic that returned to the WRC Series in 2020 after a massive 19-year hiatus.
The 2023 WRC Safari Rally will be flagged off at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park on Thursday with crews heading to the Kasarani Grounds for the Super Special Stage thereafter.
This year’s edition has attracted 34 entries. Other than Rovanpera and Ogier, other iconic figures gracing the event are Solberg Oliver, Esapekka Lappi, Ott Tänak, Evans Elfyn, Dani Sordo, and Thierry Neuville.
Toyota Gazoo Racing Team hopes to continue its dominance in the cut-throat event after clinching successive titles for the last two years.
Ogier bagged the 2021 event with Rovanpera leading a podium sweep last year. Kenya’s Karan Patel will fly the country’s flag In the WRC2 category, where he will seek to wrestle the title from last year’s class winner Kajetan Kajetanowicz from Poland.
There is a heavy presence of Kenyans in the WRC3 category including McRae Kimathi, Hamza Anwar, and Jeremiah Wahome who will all be testing their mettle in Ford Fiestas. Other Kenyans flexing muscles in the iconic global showpiece are Carl Tundo, Virani Aakif, Canobbio Piero, Singh Vohra Samman, Kavisi Evans, Rathod Minesh, and Kariuki Josiah. This year’s Safari Rally has a total of 19 special stages covering a distance of 362.68km.