Safari Rallyt; Last minute activity.

It would appear that no matter how experienced you may be, even to the point of having been crowned World Rally Champion, a bit of match practice is deemed handy before a major event. This was never truer than for the Kenya Airways East African Safari Rally 2007.

Both Bjorn Waldegård and Stig Blomqvist, entered on this year´s Safari in Historic Motorsport Ford Escort RS 1600s, have taken every opportunity to drive similar cars in the last months before the Safari kicks off in Mombasa on November 25th. The most recent appearance by Blomqvist was with his Safari co-driver, Ana Goni, on the Costa Brava Rally. Entered by David Sutton in the historic section in an Escort RS1800, they took a clear victory in their category, a feat that they will be hoping to repeat when they come to East Africa in a couple of weeks time. Also running on the event was Waldegård, renewing his acquaintance with Escorts thanks to a Group 2 Escort provided by ASM Motorsport.

On the same rally, Mark Solloway of Historic Rallysport ran an Escort RS1600 for one of his clients, Dewi Bowen, which was fitted with a new type of differential. So successful was the test - Bowen led Blomqvist after three stages only to lose time when his throttle spring broke - that Mark has acquired a lot more and will be taking them down to Mombasa to change them on the three Escorts that he is running on the Safari. His Australian crew, Keith and Mary-Ann Callinan are arriving in Kenya next week to get used to the climate and go on another kind of Safari before the motoring one starts. Alex Hack is flying down to Nairobi to meet his local co-driver, David Lawrence-Brown, and then they will drive the five hundred miles down to Mombasa so that crew and car can get fully used to one another.

The Costa Brava was a tarmac event and if there is one thing that is well known about the Kenya Airways East African Safari Rally 2007, it is that there is very little competitive motoring on tarmac - or anything resembling it. All the serious competition takes place on dirt, mud, sand and rock in various combinations, sometimes all together. Thus Geoff Fielding and Preston Ayres were probably a bit closer to getting match practice when they tackled the Bulldog Rally in mid Wales a couple of weeks ago in their Tuthill prepared Porsche 911. This was an event held on un-surfaced forest tracks and thus much more like some of the Safari route. As this was their actual rally car, they were content to ensure that it went reliably and did not need any bodywork repairs before Kenya Airways flies it down to Nairobi early next week.

Most of the crews are planning on being there early enough to drive their cars in Safari conditions by way of a shake down before the event. Some, like the Historic Rallysport entries, will want to see how their new bits of technology work. Also amongst that group is David Rayner, doing the rally with wife Sarah in a Ford Capri 2.6. They used the Capri on the Carrera Americana last year and it rather disappointed them by refusing to leave Argentina after a big end bearing failed. That has been fixed and the Capri has also benefited from being fitted with Proflex suspension units - "the same as Blomqvist used last year" - which the Rayners have yet to try in African conditions.

With the majority of the overseas cars now arriving daily in the port of Mombasa and the rally officials working flat out to get them and their spares all cleared of customs, the old feelings of Safari Fever are returning to Kenya. The Kenya Airways East African Safari Rally is beginning to take on the mantle of the old Safaris of the 1970s and 1980s. With fifty-nine entries, lots of well known and prestige names behind the wheel, and many of them supported by full service crews, the event is growing ever greater in status. As Richard Tuthill, a man who has no less than six Porsches to look after said "Our service effort this year supersedes anything done before by anyone on the Safari Classic rally. Lets hope it works as we have planned !" And so say all of us ...


» Pressrelease från Safarirallyt, www.eastafricansafarirally.com.

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