Winning Safari Rally Kenya was undoubtedly one of the biggest moments of my career, but it was also the most challenging week of rallying I’ve ever experienced.
There’s a lot of talk about how tough the Safari Rally is compared to others, and whether shorter rallies are easier these days. I can only speak from my own experience, and trust me, that week in Kenya was incredibly intense.
The Safari was one of those events I always dreamed of competing in, let alone winning. Back when I was working as a mechanic for M-Sport, I missed out on it, but I had heard countless stories about the country and the roads. When it came back on the calendar and Elfyn [Evans] and I had the chance to do it, I was thrilled. And it’s definitely lived up to its reputation for toughness.
Every rally involves more than just the Thursday to Sunday competition against the clock. World Championship events are essentially a week-long ordeal, with two recce passes of every stage before the event even begins.
Recce days vary depending on the event. Sometimes they’re straightforward if the route is similar to the previous year, so you don’t need to make many adjustments to the notes. However, the Safari had lots of new stages, so I decided to re-write all the notes from scratch.
Writing notes during recce isn’t always easy, especially on some of Africa’s bumpiest roads. That’s why we re-write all the notes into a fresh book. For example, the 20-mile Camp Moran stage took us about four and a half hours to complete and required about 60 pages of notes.
This is the part of the rally that makes the days in Kenya even longer. It’s impossible to get everything done at night, so some nights we barely got two to three hours of sleep before we were up again.
A personal improvement for me this year was starting to wear glasses. I’d been struggling with my eyesight, especially by 9 or 10 at night when my eyes would start to tire, and I’d have to shut off for the day. The glasses have given me a new lease on life — now I can keep working for another couple of hours without issues.
Re-writing the notes is a huge part of the week, and it’s a big psychological hurdle to overcome before the rally begins. When I finally finish writing that last note, I can lean back, take a breath, and smile knowing I’m fully ready for the rally to start.
The rally itself always begins in Nairobi, south of the service park in Naivasha. We’re lucky to avoid the traffic and get to take a helicopter ride down there. The flight takes about 45 minutes, but it’s nice to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the stunning landscape from above.
As for the season, I’m not sure anything has changed this year. Safari was our sixth consecutive podium finish and our third win from six starts. We’re feeling pretty confident about the momentum we’ve built up.
As you’ve probably seen on DirtFish, Safari Rally Kenya went pretty well for Elfyn and me. By Saturday afternoon, we were sitting on a huge lead of almost three minutes. On any other rally, with a lead like that, you’d be feeling pretty relaxed about the rest of the event, but with the Safari, you never take anything for granted. It can all change in an instant.
Our plan for Sunday was to bring the car home. We did think about possibly going for powerstage points, but we decided to wait and see how things felt when we got there. Before that, though, there were some tough stages ahead. I was concerned about how they would cut up, while I think Elfyn might have been a bit more relaxed than me!
There’s no doubt you need some luck to win the Safari. We’ve had some bad luck in Kenya before, but this time, when we got a puncture, it was near the end of the stage, and we managed to fix it. On the final day, we had an alternator belt issue, but we had time to fix that on the road section between stages.
For someone like Elfyn, changing the alternator belt was no big deal. I’m not a bad mechanic myself, but he has more experience in these situations. In moments like that, we just know what to do, stay calm, and keep an eye on the time.
When we came through the end of the stage and saw the Maasai waiting for us, it was incredible. There was cheering, drums being banged – I couldn’t resist getting out of the car and joining in with the drumming!
Everything feels great right now. Even in Sweden, everything just felt under control – no major mistakes, nothing erratic. People keep asking me if I’ve noticed any changes in Elfyn, but honestly, I haven’t. He’s in a great groove right now, and it’s working.
Elfyn’s a bit of a perfectionist, but in rallying, you need to be adaptable and understand that conditions change, and sometimes you need to compromise. Right now, Elfyn is leaving room for moments when the car isn’t perfect or when there’s an issue with the tire, or something like that.
It’s the same with the set-up. He’s keeping flexibility in the car, so if the road surface changes dramatically between the first and second pass, he doesn’t have to worry about being locked into one direction that can’t be adjusted.
Like I said, it’s working right now. There’s been no “eureka” moment – he’s just doing what he does, and we’re doing what we do.
That said, there’s no complacency when it comes to winning an event like the Safari.
As I mentioned at the start of this column, the hard work we put in makes those moments possible. It’s that preparation and effort that build towards the celebrations on Sunday afternoon. Don’t get me wrong, I have the best job in the world, and I wouldn’t change a thing, but it’s important for people to understand how much effort goes into creating these moments.
I’ve been in the sport for a while now, and I remember when I got my first win and then a couple more. At the time, I thought: “This is amazing! I can’t wait for more!” But then, a few months would go by without another win, and I realized how rare and precious these victories are. A win in the World Championship doesn’t come around too often.
That, and the fact that this was Toyota’s 100th WRC start since returning in 2017, made the Safari win so special. And, of course, it was a milestone for our deputy team principal, Juha Kankkunen, celebrating 40 years since his first win in Kenya.
Here’s a fun fact… I first met Juha in 1998 at Rally Australia, when he was driving the Valvoline Ford Escort WRC, and I was working as a mechanic for M-Sport. And there we were, standing together on the top step of the podium.