- The WRC Safari Rally will end on Sunday afternoon.
- Evans ended the penultimate leg with a hefty 1min 57.4sec advantage.
- The Welshman who arrived in Kenya holding a 28-point championship lead, is now within touching distance of his first Safari Rally victory
Elfyn Evans is poised to extend his FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) lead after surviving a chaotic Saturday at Safari Rally Kenya, ending the penultimate leg with a hefty 1min 57.4sec advantage.
Fortune favoured the Welshman once again as Africa’s legendary endurance test served up another brutal helping of carnage. From bone-dry dust bowls to rain-soaked mudbaths, the day showcased the full spectrum of Safari extremes – and Evans was one of the few who stayed in tune.
He started Saturday with a slender 7.7sec buffer but immediately laid down a marker on the Sleeping Warrior opener. Even with rear tyre damage near the end of the 26.97-kilometre test, he still extended his lead by 8.2sec over Toyota GAZOO Racing team-mate Kalle Rovanperä.
Rovanperä’s response unravelled swiftly. A front-right tyre deflation five kilometres from the end of Elmenteita cost him 21.1sec, and worse followed at Soysambu, where a front-left puncture dropped him another 55.5sec. By midday service, his deficit to Evans had ballooned to 1min 32.5sec.
Then came the rain.
Conditions deteriorated on the repeated afternoon loop, and although Rovanperä clawed back 11.7sec from Evans on a sodden second pass of Sleeping Warrior, he arrived at the finish with a damaged rear suspension arm. A makeshift roadside fix involving a ratchet strap kept him going, but with no choice but to back off through the final two stages, he dropped almost five minutes and slipped to fifth overall behind Ott Tänak, Thierry Neuville and Takamoto Katsuta.
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Can Evans hold on for first WRC Safari Rally win?
Evans, who arrived in Kenya holding a 28-point championship lead, is now within touching distance of his first Safari Rally victory – and a significantly bolstered title advantage, should he make it through Sunday unscathed. That’s no foregone conclusion. His Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 sustained front-right damage after a moment in the final stage – a timely reminder of how the event can bite back.
“It’s definitely been a proper Safari so far. Two minutes; normally you would say that guarantees you a win – but not here. On a rally like Kenya, you have to weigh up the risk factor. We still need to drive well tomorrow, that goes without saying, and see what [points] we can pick up,” Evans said.
The drama didn’t stop with Rovanperä. In classic Safari fashion, nearly every Rally1 frontrunner faced some form of adversity.
Second-placed Tänak lost time with a deflated tyre early on, then grappled with visibility issues when the windscreen of his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 fogged up on SS12. Even so, he carries a 2min 36.0sec cushion over team-mate Neuville into Sunday’s five-stage finale.
Neuville’s day was anything but straightforward. Two punctures, a misted windscreen, and a misfiring engine late in the day all combined to slow his charge. But he still gained a position on the final test when Katsuta was forced to stop and change a wheel – his third deflation of the day. The Japanese driver has also been battling illness, making his pair of stage wins even more impressive.
Sami Pajari brought his Toyota home in a lonely sixth overall, 54.4sec behind Rovanperä but more than four minutes ahead of Grégoire Munster’s Ford Puma Rally1. Munster began the day in 11th and even bagged a stage win on SS15.
Gus Greensmith stole the WRC2 lead from Jan Solans on the day’s final stage, snatching an overall eighth place in the process. Just 5.8sec separate the pair going into Sunday, where five stages totalling almost 66km lie in wait.
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Reporting by WRC