If there was ever a rally where Elfyn Evans could take a moment to sip tea while leading by a country mile, it would be Safari Rally Kenya.
The Toyota driver is so far ahead he might as well send Kalle Rovanperä a postcard from the top of the leaderboard. By Saturday morning, Evans had ballooned his advantage to over a minute, thanks to his own pace and, of course, Rovanperä’s newfound obsession with punctures.
Saturday started with Evans nursing a mere 7.7-second lead over his Finnish teammate Rovanpera, but by the end of the first stage of Saturday, that gap had doubled like a magic trick gone wrong for Rovanperä. Evans had a puncture of his own but still managed to extend his lead because that’s just how Safari Rally works. You don’t win by being the fastest; you win by being the least cursed.
Then came the Elmenteita stage, where Rovanperä got a front right puncture and limped to the finish, while Evans probably had enough time to take a short nap before checking the results. The gap stretched to 37 seconds, and it looked like Kalle was about to stage a heroic comeback on Soysambu. But fate had other plans specifically, another puncture, this time on the front left. By now, Rovanperä’s rally car resembled a porcupine that had a run in with a hedgehog convention. He lost a full minute, trailing Evans by 1 minute 32.5 seconds and now feeling the heat from Ott Tänak, who is lurking just 17 seconds behind him.
Blaming the misfortune on a road full of zebras, Rovanperä explained; “We had a road full of zebras on a fast section and we hit some stones because we had to avoid the zebras.” Somewhere in the Toyota team’s service area, an engineer probably added “wildlife diplomacy” to the list of required skills for a Safari Rally victory.
Meanwhile, in Hyundai land, Thierry Neuville had a morning that went from bad to worse. A puncture on SS11 had him stopping for a tyre change, and by the time he was done, Takamoto Katsuta had waltzed past him into fourth place. Katsuta then casually demolished the reigning world champion on the next stage by a mind-blowing 42.8 seconds. Neuville, still recovering from feeling unwell and suffering from a lack of sleep, might have been considering swapping his rally helmet for a pillow at this point.
Over in WRC2, Jan Solans now leads after Kajetan Kajetanowicz decided that the first stage of the day was also a great place to park and retire. Gus Greensmith briefly took the lead, but as per the unspoken rule of Safari Rally, he also got a puncture. And then another one. By this point, tyre manufacturers were probably sending Toyota and Skoda ‘thank you’ notes for singlehandedly keeping their business afloat.
Elsewhere, Josh McErlean was having a day to forget after breaking a steering arm on Sleeping Warrior (SS11) and losing 29 minutes. If he had a Netflix subscription, he could have watched half an episode of a show while waiting for the repair job to be done.
As for Adrien Fourmaux, he was spared from the madness because Hyundai just pulled him from the day’s competition altogether, choosing instead to save the car for Super Sunday. Given the rally’s unpredictability, that might just be the smartest decision anyone has made all weekend.
With just one day to go, Evans now sits in a commanding position. Unless he wakes up tomorrow and finds his car turned into a zebra sanctuary overnight, the Welshman is looking like the king of the Savannah this year.
