Press Release : 008

November 21, 2009

Mombasa, Saturday evening

The formalities of the last few days are now finished. At the Driver's briefing this evening, the event director, Surinder Thatthi, read out a short list of five competitors whose only lack was the completion of their service vehicle documents.

Two cars from the forty-six entered will not be starting. One, Hoey Ghose, fell ill and decided to withdraw while another, the Porsche of Belgian, Jacques Walens, suffered from what were at first described as "delays on the sea" and did not arrive here in Mombasa. One hoped that it would not be making an appearance on the Somali Pirate Rally in the New Year !  In fact, it never left Australia.

The Porsche 911 for Björn Waldegård and Iqbal Sagoo was here on time but Waldegård did suffer from delayed shipping but it was his luggage from Amsterdam that was the culprit.

One Kenya citizen, resident in London failed to get his new passport back in time to fly back to his home country and his place has now been taken by Uwe Kurzenberger who, as in 2007 when he stepped in to a similar situation, was just out here on holiday looking at the rally.

Meanwhile those who did have their cars on dry land were not finding it all easy going. Steve Perez and Staffan Parmander took out their BTR Motorsport Datsun 260Z for a shake down but it turned into a bit of a shake-up when it hit part of Kenya a bit too hard - and Kenya won. Tim Ashton's men got to work changing the track control arm and bottom joint on one side of the front suspension and the 260Z is once again fit for action.

But another part of the Perez équipe did work perfectly first time and that was his personal helicopter that got called into use earlier than anticipated to take his wife, Angie, to Mombasa hospital. Earlier in the day, she had fallen and, it turned out, broke a small bone in her foot.

In previous Safari Classics, the combination of veterans Jayant Shah and Lofty Drews have always suffered from head gasket problems in various Datsuns. The number of gasket changes even stretched into double figures on one occasion. To guard against this being repeated in 2009, a new engine was summoned from England and fitted. Sadly, the aerodynamics of the radiator and bonnet were not properly sorted before its first trials and the result was an overheated engine that needed - you guessed it - a cylinder head gasket change. Lofty is hoping that this old chestnut has not returned to dog their rally.

By contrast, local rally preparation expert Crispin Sassoon who is partnering Peter Stoehr from Germany in a Datsun 1600SSS was seen wandering around the rally office looking a trifle bemused. They tried the car a couple of weeks ago, made a few minor adjustments, declared it fit and have not had to do anything since. "I don't understand it" said Crispin, "No last minute panics ? This is just not normal".

Also content was Paul-Eric Jarry who, with Jean-François Andreoli, is driving one of five Francis Tuthill prepared Porsche 911s on the Safari. He took the car out on Friday and pronounced it "just perfect".

And Gerard Marcy was also confident about his Tuthill Porsche 911 which is the same one that he drove so impressively in 2007 and so nearly beat Björn Waldegård's Ford Escort only to suffer suspension failure at the last day.

Eric Comas, the preparer of the two immaculate Alpine Renault A110s that are here has had to step in as driver when one of his clients fell sick. He and the other driver, Charles Firmenich, took the cars out to try them this morning and discovered that they had their suspension set perhaps a bit too high and will have them lowered before the rally starts.

 

Mombasa 17:30