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Latest NewsPRINT PAGE
Mombasa, Sunday Morning The big event last night was the Welcome Party on the lawn of the Whitesands Sarova Lodge Hotel. The crews and officials were welcomed by Surinder Thatthi, event director who introduced the patron of the 2009 Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic Rally 2009, D.P.Marwaha. Now eighty-five years old and living in Iringa, Tanzania, this remarkable gentleman participated in the very first East African Safari Rally held in 1953 to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Driving a Tatra T600 with Vic Preston, he finished with the lowest penalties and would have been declared the overall winner but that year there were only class winners. He made up for it by winning the next two Safari Rallies outright, both with Vic Preston but first in a VW Beetle and then in a Ford Zephyr. D.P. recalled those events for the 2009 participants and particularly the cars which in those days had to be very much more "showroom standard". And there were no service cars to the extent that came in later years. Also addressing the crews was the Commercial Director of Kenya Airways, Mohan Chandra, who first of all welcomed everyone and then emphasised how important events like the Safari were for Kenya and its tourism. Ms Jackie Mbandi followed him from the event's other leading sponsor, Access Kenya, who is providing the Internet connection that keeps the rally running. The chief scrutineer, Karl-Heinz Goldstein - a man who in the past has engineered Safari winning cars like the Opel Ascona 400 - came into the press office yesterday glad that the bulk of his work was done. He announced that he had seen all the cars and that he "had given out a lot of Webers" or at least it sounded like that. While everyone was wondering why the chief scrutineers had been doing handing our free carburettors. In fact, he had given out a "lot of waivers" to people whose cars had possessed some minor infringement of the technical rules. Who better to be able to decide what is a performance enhancing modification or one that was inevitable in the preparation of a car that is about to tackle 4,500kms of African roads ? A quick recap regarding the first of the two Alpine Renaults. Its original crew were the only two Italians on the event but when Michele de Nora fell ill, Erik Comas, the team owner stepped in to take over the entry. He will be co-drive by local man, Ravi Soni. Comas is a true character in motor sport. He started out in karts and was a champion in France in 1983. He then drove in various single seaters before driving for Renault in the French Touring car championship where he took the title in 1987. He was back in single seaters the following year and won the French Formula Three championship in 1988 and the F3000 championship in 1990. He then spent four years behind the wheel of a Formula One car driving first for Ligier and then Larrousse. Since then, he has driven mainly in Japan winning the GT championship there in 1998 and 1999. Back in France, he has rallied extensively with Group N Mitsubishis and has several times driven Le Mans and events of the ALMS series. More recently, he has turned his attention to classic rallying and possesses a small armada of Alpines and other rally cars. Comas did have one more set-back yesterday apart from discovering that perhaps the Alpines were set a little too high and were thus suffering from a restriction in the suspension movement that required them to be softened off a bit. He went out and tried the car again and jumped a bit too hard with it and the gearbox suffered a problem. Over the last few days, the Safari competitors have been allowed to go and look over the first special stage to run on Monday morning. Opinions seem to differ quite considerably about what they saw. Björn Waldegård thought that the stage was rougher than last time, which is quite possible as the whole of East Africa has had some quite heavy rain in the last ten days. Gerard Marcy thought it very acceptable and thought that it incorporated all those things that made for a typical Safari stage thus making it a good yardstick by which to judge the whole rally. And, not surprisingly considering their problems, the Alpine Renault drivers thought that it was pretty rough. The Safari Classic sends out a "three-day" car ahead of the rally that passes over all the roads exactly three days before the event. The reports back so far - it reached Arusha last night - were that the roads were in pretty good condition though the uphill parts were often more rutted than normal after the recent rains. However, today they will passing through the infamous Mbulu escarpment section over towards Lake Manyara, which, if it is wet, can be a graveyard for rally cars. It was this section that on one occasion in the past almost single-handedly reduced the list cars still running to the point where only seven of them finally came to the finish. The Safari Classic also runs a car through all the sections two hours before the rally passes but this is too close for it to be able to send back detailed information for the crews. In fact the organisation behind even a classic rally run in the "traditional" mode is quite astonishing. Not only are there the marshals running the controls and timing but, thanks to the fact that in traditional Safari fashion, the rally runs through two countries, all the people and vehicles associated with it have to pass through two borders, the first going into Tanzania and the other returning into Kenya. All the passports, car documents, lists of spare parts and the necessary forms have to be checked by the rally officials. A team working under Achie Khan does all this and the organisation of the two border crossings themselves. It is a massive undertaking with the rally cars themselves as the top priority. Achie reckons that if everything is done right before the rally and the crew have their paperwork ready as the car approaches the border, then his team working in close coordination with the border officials can get a rally car through a crossing in about two minutes. At the moment, all forty-four starters are in a convoy from Whitesands Hotel to downtown Mombasa where the ceremonial start will take place at 13:00 under the famous crossed tusks in Moi Avenue. Following the ceremonial start, the cars will not immediately make their way back to Whitesands, from where the rally proper starts on Monday morning, but they will go north up the coast to Vipingo Ridge to do a competitive section. The times from this will determine the starting order on Monday morning. The Vipingo stage will also be the first stage out when the rally starts on Monday. Mombasa, 12:30
For press enquiries, contact E-mail: info@eastafricansafarirally.com East African
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