If you’re a rally fan and you’re still sleeping peacefully right now, I have serious questions about your life choices. The WRC Safari Rally is back roaring into our lives from March 20th to 23rd, 2025 and if you’re not already losing sleep, hoarding jerrycans, and arguing with your wife about why you need 14 spare tyres, are you even alive?
If you’re calmly sipping tea while reading this, you’re not ready. But if you’ve already packed a tent, 17 jerrycans, and a spare liver, congratulations you, my friend, are a true Safari disciple. Now before you grab your faded Subaru cap and start shouting “Flat Out!” at your neighbors, let’s pause for a minute.
Why is this rally such a big deal?
Let’s rewind to 1953. Queen Elizabeth II had just taken the throne, and somewhere in East Africa, a brilliant lunatic had an idea. “You know what would really celebrate this royal moment? A completely insane car race across the most unforgiving terrain this side of Mars.” And thus, the Coronation Rally was born a royal nightmare for drivers, but an absolute feast for anyone who loves watching expensive machinery suffer.
Later, someone wisely renamed it the Safari Rally because what’s cooler than tearing through wildlife parks, dodging giraffes, and outrunning rhinos? Beats the hell out of tea parties and cucumber sandwiches.
Back in the day, every Easter, Kenya transformed into the World Capital of Automotive Suffering. The rally stretched across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda 4,000km of pure automotive abuse. Cars broke. Dreams shattered. Mechanics cried. The roads were so bad, that calling them “roads” was basically fraud.
Modern drivers complain about “loose gravel” and “rough stages.” Please. In old-school Safari, if you didn’t get stuck in mud up to your headlights, swarmed by mosquitoes the size of helicopters, or chased by a rhino with attitude problems, were you even trying? Out of 100 cars, maybe 10 would finish. Not because they were slow but because everything else, from wildlife to weather, was actively trying to murder them.
One minute you’re flying down a dusty trail, the next you’re doing backstroke in floodwaters next to a very confused hippo. Your co-driver’s job included navigating, wildlife management, and occasionally prayer leadership. This wasn’t a rally it was an off-road pilgrimage, complete with potholes large enough to baptize a small family.
Fast forward to today. The action is centered around Naivasha, smack in the middle of the Rift Valley. The stages Camp Moran, Loldia, KenGen Geothermal, Kedong, and Sleeping Warrior sound fancy, but don’t let the poetic names fool you. They’re basically beautiful death traps, sprinkled with dust, mud, and the occasional zebra with zero respect for FIA regulations.
And Hell’s Gate? That’s not a church retreat, my friend. It’s exactly what it sounds like a place where suspensions scream, tyres beg for mercy, and co-drivers suddenly remember they forgot to write their wills.
Safari Weather plays by its own rules. Start a stage under perfect blue skies? Cute. Five kilometres later, you’re in Noah’s Ark: Safari Edition. Rivers overflow, your car becomes a submarine, and you become an unwilling contestant on “Survivor: Motorsport Edition.”
And the mud? This isn’t regular mud this is Safari Mud. It’s clingy, rude, and holds lifelong grudges. It’s the only rally where million-dollar cars get rescued by a guy named Samuel with a cow and a suspiciously short rope.
But if the rain doesn’t get you, the dust will. Safari dust isn’t regular dust it’s evil ninja dust. It sneaks into your shoes, your ears, your lunchbox, and places you didn’t even know you had. Visibility drops to zero, and your co-driver starts navigating based on gut feeling and ancestral whispers.
And just when you think you’re safe, boulders the size of school buses pop out like boss fights, ready to rip off your suspension and your dignity in equal measure.
Through all this madness, legends were born. Like Joginder Singh, aka The Flying Sikh who won Safari three times, back when “winning” meant surviving lions, rainstorms, and mysterious dashboard noises all at once. They say his car ran on caffeine, willpower, and raw fear.
Or the Unsinkable Seven, the only drivers to survive the absolute carnage of the 1963 Safari Rally out of 84 starters. If you ever meet one of those guys at a bar, buy them a drink immediately. Hell, buy them a whole brewery they earned it.
After a 19-year break, Safari returned to the WRC in 2021 and oh boy, it was like it never left. Cars broke. Drivers questioned life choices. Mechanics aged a decade overnight. The dust came back, the rain came back, and so did that chaotic East African spirit where the whole village comes out to cheer, and the goats still refuse to clear the racing line.
Now, if you call yourself a petrolhead in Africa and you’ve never experienced the Safari Rally live, I’m sorry your opinions are immediately invalid. You can’t talk turbos and suspension if you’ve never chased a rally car down a village road with 400 strangers and a goat named Fred.
Safari Rally isn’t just a motorsport event it’s a cultural baptism by dust and adrenaline. Without it, your rally credentials are flimsier than a Datsun’s suspension on Kedong rocks.
