Jaspreet Chatthe man to beat in series

Jaspreet Chatthe is the man to beat in this year’s Kenya National Rally Championship (KNRC) series.

The Kisumu-based driver is chasing a double this season: The KNRC title and the FIA African Rally Championship.

After a good display in the Rwanda Rally at the weekend, the 27-year-old is back home preparing for the KCB Machakos Rally which gets under way this Friday with the reconnaissance of the route. The rally proper starts on Saturday.  

 “It was good to get back to winning ways in Rwanda and now it’s time to concentrate on the KNRC series with the Machakos Rally this weekend. I can only look at each event as it comes and thus, my concentration is focused mainly on the immediate rally and not all the remaining events in both the ARC and KNRC championship,’’ said Chatthe.

Chatthe, who is one of the new breed of young rally drivers to emerge across the continent, aims to become the first driver in Kenya National Rally Championship to win both major titles in the same season.

So far, he has proven that he has what it takes to challenge more established drivers in the competition both in Kenya and in the continent.

He is joined by Rajbir Rai, who also started rallying recently but has surprised many with his good results, the latest coming in the Eldoret Rally where he tried to match Tapio Laukkanen with speed and time, although the former British and Finnish champion was in his own class, winning the event by a big margin.

Rai has already left a mark with victories both in past round of the Kisumu Rally and Uganda’s Pearl Rally. The latter was one of the rounds of the African Rally Championship.

Like Rai, Chatthe continues to torment drivers not only in the KCB-sponsored series, but also in the FIA African Rally Championship contest.

He has already won in Zambia and Tanzania and latest victory coming in Rwanda.  

Other promising youngsters are Denis Mwenda, Farhaaz Khan, Jansher Sandhu, Karan Patel and Eric Bengi. For them, winning is not the ultimate goal at this early stage of the competition, but finishing higher up the table will give them satisfaction of being with top competitors.

Twenty 27-year-old Farhaaz was among the new kids in rallying to have done well in Eldoret. The 13th-place in Eldoret was the best-ever position for the young driver, who also scored points for the best-placed Division One contender in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9 car.

“Yes we are not aiming for victory as yet but just to gather experience and gain results in the process. It is an honour to be rallying with the legends like Ian Duncan. The advise and tips they give us is a privilege for youngsters like us." He went on to say: “Our goal is to remain consistent and build our partnership as we are both in the early stages. Our goal is to both be champions one day God willing.”