Back on Safari

What's the most famous rally in the world? Monte Carlo, for sure – but the next best-known is surely the Safari Rally, which traverses Kenya to the spectacular backdrop of untrammelled wildlife and big sky.

The modern WRC event, which returned to the championship in 2021 after a 19-year absence, isn't quite the no-holds-barred epic that people remember from the past – the route is now run on closed special stages rather than public roads, for example – but the name remains just as emblematic.

Since then, one manufacturer has dominated: Toyota, winning every Safari Rally since it returned to the championship (with a historic one-two-three-four last year).

This year was no exception, as reigning champion Kalle Rovanpera took his second Safari victory, having led from the very first day. His team mate Takamoto Katsuta was second, while M-Sport's Adrien Fourmaux was third in the Ford Puma. While Toyota currently leads the manufacturers' championship, Hyundai driver Thierry Neuville is on top of the drivers' classification, having finished fifth in Africa.

Just like Rallye Monte-Carlo that began the season, the Safari has a long and rich history – which dates all the way back to 1953. It was originally called the East African Coronation Safari, to celebrate the new Queen Elizabeth II of England, who learned of her succession to the throne while on holiday at the Treetops Lodge near Nyeri (which, incidentally, is not far from the current rally route).   

And it's this illustrious heritage – along with the complexity of the conditions – that makes the Safari so special. The rally is all about extremes: not just extremes of weather – which can range from apocalyptic heat to torrential rain – but also jaw-dropping scenery.

The Safari is unquestionably the most photogenic rally in the world, with iconic images from the past recording the cars jumping to the backdrop of Mount Kilimanjaro, while Masai tribesmen look on.

It was always the rally where crews interacted most with local life, as it was previously run on open roads – alongside normal traffic – over competitive sections that went on for hundreds of kilometres. Spotter helicopters were linked by radio to the cars to warn of hazards ahead (which might include a herd of elephants) and the terrain was almost unimaginably rough.

To cope with the conditions, teams used to build bespoke cars, with strengthened bodyshells, daytime running lights, and ‘snorkel' exhausts for the many waterholes. Those snorkels are still used today, making a Safari Rally car instantly recognisable. Although the terrain is still rougher than most other events, the tyres used are the same as any other gravel rally: Pirelli's famous Scorpion, with the soft compound favoured this year despite the demanding conditions.

And that's an aspect of the rally that hasn't gone away, despite the sanitised format. Think of it as a cross between the Dakar and the Cannonball Run, and you more or less get the picture. A huge part of the Safari's appeal in the past lay in the fact that it was fundamentally lawless – there's even a popular legend that one well-known manufacturer cheated by swapping an entire car mid-route in the Group B era – but this disregard for conventional rules is also why the Safari dropped off the WRC calendar after 2002. Essentially, the Safari had to change to accommodate modern-day sensibilities. And here we are today.

What we have now is something very different, mostly run through private plantations. However, the rally organisers – many of whom worked on the ‘old' Safari – have still come up with an event very much in keeping with the spirit of the original: a definite car breaker, with some zebras and elephants in among the spectators for good measure.

The Safari always used to be an event that you won by going as slowly as possible, which is a brand new skill for the current generation of drivers, brought up on the flat-out sprints that characterise the modern WRC. As Kalle Rovanpera pointed out after sealing his 12^th career victory last weekend: “It's always special to win here,” he said. “The Safari is just like nowhere else.”

Even by Safari standards, the 1963 event was exceptionally tough, with 84 cars tackling a 5000-kilometre route. Only seven drivers got to the finish, known as the ‘unsinkable seven': the lowest finishing rate ever seen in the sport. In a quirk of history, there were only seven finishers in the 1968 event as well, with two of them (Nick Nowicki and Joginder Singh) having also formed part of the original ‘unsinkable seven'.

Kenyans had always enjoyed a stranglehold on their home event. But the Europeans had been getting gradually quicker over this highly specialised terrain, until 1972 when Hannu Mikkola finally broke the local deadlock in a Ford Escort. Runner-up, in a Porsche 911, was a certain Sobieslaw Zasada, who later returned to tackle the revitalised 2021 event when he was incredible 91 years old. His 1972 car was a borrowed leftover from Porsche's factory team the previous year that had remained in Kenya: serviced by just one mechanic and a couple of Polish volunteers, who just happened to be there on holiday and wanted to help out.

Bjorn Waldegard was 46 years and 155 days old when he sealed his 16^th and final win, on the 1990 Safari Rally: setting a new record. After one of the most challenging events in Safari history – only 10 cars made the finish – Waldegard claimed victory by a full 38 minutes, despite his Toyota Celica chewing up so many water pumps that a man from the factory in Cologne had to get on a plane to Nairobi on Friday night, arriving with a suitcase full of spares.

The revolutionary new Ford Focus WRC didn't exactly have an easy debut: it was disqualified for a water pump issue on the Monte Carlo Rally (Waldegard could probably have sympathised). The third round of the season, Safari, would be the toughest test of all, so expectations were carefully managed. What nobody dared to imagine though was that Colin McRae would win by 15 minutes. M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson still says that this was one of the proudest moments of his career.

Richard Burns, a two-time winner of the event, always had an affinity with the Safari; his fluid driving style perfectly suited to the route's car-breaking demands. On the second leg in 2002, he was running fifth until the suspension snapped. No problem. He nursed his Peugeot down the road for about 50 kilometres, but then got bogged down in soft sand within tantalising sight of the service park.