Saturday in Kenya saw one of the most dramatic days in recent Safari Rally memory.
The headline of the day is that Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston have a lead of 1 min 25.5 seconds over Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria with Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen rounding out the podium.
The popular Japanese Toyota star, staring at the opportunity to claim his maiden WRC victory admitted: “Honestly it’s much easier when you are fighting flat out everywhere. It’s very stressful, I am just trying to avoid every single rock, even the very small ones.”
Elfyn Evans retired with broken suspension in stage 13 with rally leader Oliver Solberg and second-placed Sebastien Ogier retiring on the open section on the way to the midday service.
“We picked up a double puncture and managed to fit another tyre to start the next stage, but it looks like there was more damage caused by the impact with the rock. Coming into the first braking of the last stage of the loop, the rear suspension gave way at that moment – or something at the rear anyway – and that’s where it ended unfortunately,”, Evans related.
Thierry Neuville was also forced to retire after running out of tyres in stage 14, where he had three punctures and only the two permitted spares on board.
Overnight rain across the Kenyan savannah turned the stages into a quagmire: Ogier suffered a double puncture in the opening stage and lost 2min 11.9 seconds, plummeting from second to fifth before clawing his way back into second overall after the treacherous Sleeping Warrior 1 stage.
Sami Pajari held third in the overall rankings before an tyre exploded in stage 12 which saw him drop over five minutes and plunge down the leaderboard to eighth overall.
The final stage of the morning loop decimated the field, with punctures, and zero visibility for some as they ran out of windscreen washer water as they desperately tired to clear their windscreens. Fourmaux ended the stage with smoke coming out of his Hyundai’s engine but made it safely back to service.
In WRC2, Robert Virves held an incredible fifth overall, with 55 seconds in hand over Gus Greensmith and Fabrizio Zaldivar.
Andreas Mikkelsen, Diego Dominguez and Daniel Chwist rounded out the top ten.
Both M-Sport Pumas faced a litany of issues; McErlean’s car ingested some water in Sleeping Warrior (SS13) while Armstrong had problems in SS14. “We had absolutely no power from the start and then we had a puncture which we stopped and changed and then after that we had a warning and we stopped to see if it was anything bad. Maybe not quite the right thing to do,” he said.
Another puncture in SS15 cost Armstrong yet more time.
Sunday’s itinerary features 57.7km of racing across four stages and all the retired competitors are expected to return to fight it out to claim the ten bonus points on offer.
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