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PAST WINNER IS
A HERO.
Mention the East African Safari
Rally and it is not long before the name of five times winner of that
world famous event, Shekhar Mehta, crops up. Sadly Shekhar died last year,
but his presence at the 2003 and 2005 Safari Classic rallies did much
to help them establish the present status of the Kenya Airways East African
Safari Classic Rally, a major international rally due to start from Mombasa
next Monday.
Shekhar's spirit will certainly
be present at the 2007 Safari Classic. His five Safari wins were all obtained
in Datsuns and it is thus no surprise to know that these cars outnumber
the other marques on the Safari Classic. Of the fifty-eight entries, no
fewer than twenty are Datsuns of one kind or another.
And one Datsun 240Z in particular
has a little bit more of a connection with Shekhar's history than most.
Entered and driven by Imi Dewji and co-driven by Hanif Moledina, both
British residents, this is an original 240Z dating from the early 1970s
and will be running with competition number thirty-one. This is the same
number as the 240Z with which Shekhar Mehta finished second on the 1971
Safari - his first drive in the big Datsun sports car - and with which
he completed a Datsun 240Z one-two with the outright winner that year,
Edgar Herrmann. Shekhar's first victory on the Safari came two years later
when he won outright in another 240Z.
Imi Dewji has done both previous
Safari Classics and for him it is a passion to follow in the footsteps
of his role model and hero : "I'm doing this event one more time
to pay tribute to one of the finest rally drivers the world has ever seen.
And the 240Z that I am driving is almost identical to the one he drove
all those years ago."
For press enquiries, contact
E-mail: safari.press@btinternet.com
News will be issued daily during the event on www.eastafricansafarirally.com
Photography is copyright free and can be found at www.mcklein.de all downloads
of high resolution photos of the daily action are free of charge.
John Davenport Tel: +44 7973.334297
Francesca Davenport Tel: +44 7976.918968
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