HOWCLOSEISTHESAFARI RALLYTOMAKINGARETURN?

Antiquated anachronism or vital component of the World Rally Championship’s future? What is the future of the Safari Rally?

Talk to the man who took one podium finish from eight Kenyan starts and you’ll get one answer. Talk to the man who started seven and won two and you’ll get a very different response. FIA president Jean Todt – the podium finisher – can see a future for the Safari. Head of Toyota’s rally operation – and two-time winner as a driver – Tommi Makinen, can’t.

The future of this once-great event was brought into focus last week, when Todt opened the WRC Safari Project’s new HQ building in Nairobi. The next step of a possible return to the WRC calendar comes next week when the Safari Rally will be attended by WRC officials. This is as close as the rally has come to returning to the top flight, but such a move has already polarised opinion across the service park.

What went wrong?

October 1, 2002 was the date when the game was up for the Safari Rally and the World Rally Championship. The FIA issued the calendar for the following year’s series and Africa was absent. The explanation was that the event organisers had failed to meet its obligations to the governing body and the necessary guarantees that these obligations could be met was not forthcoming.

The Automobile Association of Kenya was reckoned to owe the FIA more than US$40,000 (£28,000) – debts which had been outstanding for more than a year and when that money was still not forthcoming the FIA decided it wouldn’t be included in 2003.

Even before that, the Safari was struggling to adapt to the increasing demands on it to fall into line with European WRC rounds.

First organised in 1953, it was originally labelled the Coronation Safari because it ran during a holiday taken to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The event became known as the ultimate motorsporting adventure, an open road race across the Serengeti with Mount Kilimanjaro for a backdrop. Victory on the Safari was, for a time, as worthwhile to a manufacturer as winning the world championship itself.

But as technology moved into the 1990s, the cars got quicker and quicker and, more pertinently, better equipped to deal with what Africa would throw at them at speed. No longer was there the same need to lift for washed away roads or football-sized rocks. Safari-specific cars were strong as they come and almost geared for the same sort of speed as they were taking on the jumps of Finland. This combined with rising population and increased traffic on the Kenyan roads meant there were more accidents involving the general public.

Hence, in 2002, the organisers tried to run a Safari on supposedly closed roads (it’s pretty much impossible to close roads running through settlements outside of Nairobi). This dilution left the Safari caught between two stools – an unsustainable past and an unaffordable future.

What happened then?

The Safari Rally continued to run and twice featured on the Eurosport-funded Intercontinental Rally Challenge calendar. Since then it has become a round of the African Rally Championship only, with a dramatically different route, unrecognisable from the height of its popularity as an East African Safari.

While enthusiasm for the modern event waned, a classic rally was started by Kenyan Mike Kirkland. The first event ran 50 years on from the first, 1953 Safari in 2003. This biannual event has prospered with the likes of Bjorn Waldegaard and Stig Blomqvist listed among its winners.

What happens next week?

The Safari Rally runs from March 16-18 and includes a 361-mile route, of which 137 miles will be competitive. The rally starts from the centre of Nairobi and heads south for Naivasha, where the service park and rally HQ is located. Saturday provides the mainstay of the competitive route with close to 100 miles of sport before a Sunday lunchtime finish. Typically for Kenya, all the action is high altitude, with the stages all set between 2000 and 2500 metres.

Will this rally help?

Clerk of the course Gurvir Bhabra is determined to run next week’s rally as much to WRC standard as possible. One of the primary concerns the WRC stakeholders have is centred on safety – FIA president Todt has made it abundantly clear that the safety and security of the stages is paramount – and to that end this will be the first Safari ever to run completely on private farm roads.

The stages running through the Rift Valley have been graded to what’s been reported to MN as ‘European-specification’ gravel roads. The organisers have included chicanes to slow some of the higher-speed straights. The aim of next week is to demonstrate both the sporting infrastructure and the financial wherewithal to run. A 2019 candidate event is already on the cards, with 2020 the targeted year for the world championship.

Having met with Todt last week, Bhabra admitted the event’s future was in its own hands. He said: “Jean Todt told us, simply and clearly, getting or not getting the Safari back to the WRC is our own decision.”

What do people think?

Todt said: “The modern World Rally Championship needs to extend its horizons and become more global and I would like to see us return to Kenya for a tough and demanding event. As the world’s second largest continent, Africa is very important to the FIA and the Safari Rally represents everything that is in the DNA of our sport.”

Makinen has made clear his feelings that the current generation of World Rally Cars are not designed for endurance events or rough roads. While the Safari organisers are keen to underline this will be an event more in line with the rest of the WRC, the Finn’s not convinced.

“I don’t think this is what the sport is about so much now,” he told MN. “I think [this] event would be too expensive. I don’t like these kind of endurance races and still there would be areas where we would have to change the car.”

Makinen’s opposite number at M-sport, Malcolm Wilson, was keen to see what next week brings.

“The number one priority has to be safety,” said Wilson. “We simply couldn’t run a Safari in the style of what we used to do, not from a safety or a cost perspective. I’ve been told the roads would be smoother, so the cars could cope. Let’s see, from a historical perspective it would be interesting to have a Safari Rally back, but it has to be cost-effective.”

Of the current drivers, Elfyn Evans told MN he’d be interested in competing in Africa.

“I was in secondary school last time the Safari Rally was running,” he said. “But I’ve heard the stories and it’s an iconic event – it would be interesting, but it has to work for everybody.”