TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team drivers Sébastien Ogier and Oliver Solberg are separated by just one second at the head of a close lead battle after the first full day of Safari Rally Kenya.
After Thursday afternoon’s thrilling start in the rain and mud of Camp Moran, the repeat of the same stage that was due to open Friday was cancelled due to the deteriorated road conditions. This still left seven stages totalling 100.66 competitive kilometres to be driven around Lake Naivasha across the day.
Ogier began the day third overall and 1m05.1s from overnight leader Solberg, but won the morning’s first stage of Loldia and reduced that deficit to 38.2s across the morning loop. He was quickest too in the first stage of the afternoon, Kedong, to move ahead of team-mate Elfyn Evans for second place.
Solberg had a small overshoot in the first stage of the day but lost most of his advantage to tyre damage in the second test of the afternoon – at which point his margin over Ogier stood at just 1s. Ogier then won the second pass of Loldia, cutting the gap to 0.7s, before Solberg took 0.3s back on the Mzabibu stage that rounded out the day. Evans ended the day in third overall, within 20.5s of the lead.
After a cautious start in Thursday’s tricky opening stage, Sami Pajari showed strong pace throughout Friday, winning SS5 and SS6 in the morning and SS8 and SS10 in the afternoon, ensuring a clean sweep of stage wins for the GR YARIS Rally1.
During mid-day service, the team discovered an unexpected issue on Pajari’s car that had to be repaired, meaning he left service two minutes late and incurred a 20-second penalty. Despite this he went on to gain fourth overall in the afternoon, ending the day 50s away from Evans.
Takamoto Katsuta was running fourth mid-way through the day before he sustained damage to both front tyres in the first stage of the afternoon. Carefully managing the remaining three stages without a spare tyre, he finished the day in seventh overall, still within two minutes of the lead.
Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“It’s been a very exciting day to follow. I had the chance to go and watch some stages myself this afternoon and it was incredible to see the speed that the drivers are able to do on these roads. It’s been a good day overall for us. Some of our guys have been a little bit unlucky, like Taka was with his tyres this afternoon and Oliver too. I knew that Seb would be able to fight back today using all his experience. Oliver is driving well too, not pushing too hard, and it’s now incredibly close between them, while Elfyn is not so far behind either. Sami also did an extremely good day with four stage wins. I’m sure that tomorrow is going to be exciting to watch too, whether there’s rain or sunshine.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been a bit of a mixed day for us. We gave away a bit of time at moments, some of it a bit unnecessarily, but that’s also the nature of this rally. We damaged a wheel in the first run through Kedong and dropped a bit of time with that. It’s been going OK but I wouldn’t say I’m happy. The stages that are coming tomorrow are prone to a lot of rain, especially in the afternoon, and conditions could be difficult already in the first pass. We’ll just keep trying to do the best we can.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“I think I can be very happy with today, starting with a deficit of more than a minute and being only one second from the lead tonight. Of course, we always believed that we could come back after last night, but it felt like a long shot even here in Kenya. Now it’s all very open, so let’s see. I think we are all expecting that tomorrow is the biggest day of the rally with three very demanding stages, so many things can still happen, but we’ll try to keep the same approach and a strong rhythm.”
Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“Today the goal was to try to be clean and keep a similar pace to Elfyn. This afternoon was so rocky, and for my first time in the car in these conditions it isn’t easy. We probably lost half our lead from being careful, and half the lead from the tyre damage in SS8. That was unfortunate but a lead is a lead and I have to be happy with that. Seb has been incredible today, probably taking more risks, but there’s such a long way to go and to be one second in front is better than two minutes behind.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“This morning I was driving quite steady and not really pushing, but still the times were not too bad and the feeling in the car was good. Unfortunately, in the first stage of the afternoon we got the double puncture. That was really not ideal and I just tried to survive the afternoon with so many rough sections knowing that we didn’t have any spare tyres. We’ve lost a few positions but a minute on this rally is almost nothing and we know that tomorrow anything can happen. Hopefully there will be some drama and I’m ready if it rains.”
Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“It’s been a nice day for us. The conditions were relatively straightforward, and I just tried to choose the sections where I could push. I still felt that in the most tricky and rough places I was trying to back off. Still, we could set the fastest time in four of the stages and be very close in the others, and that was really nice to see. It’s not like we were just flat-out everywhere because that will end very quickly: you need to be clever too. That will be important too on tomorrow’s stages, where we’ve seen a lot of rain and drama before.”
End of day two (Friday):
1 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 1h33m50.2s
2 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.0s
3 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +20.5s
4 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m10.5s
5 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1m46.1s
6 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1m47.3s
7 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m53.3s
8 Esapekka Lappi/Enni Mälkönen (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +2m53.2s
9 Robert Virves/Jakko Viilo (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +6m53.6s
10 Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +7m08.1s
(Results as of 18:00 on Friday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
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