Countdown on for mother of all gravel racing

The journey to the 2023 WRC Safari Rally Kenya for the rest of the world has begun.

Following the staging of the third round World Rally Championship in faraway Mexico a week ago, it is now 85 days to the June 23 Safari Rally start day in Naivasha.

WRC Mexico, returning to the championship in 2020, is based in the country’s fifth largest city, León, 400km north west of Mexico City where drivers are subjected to the thrills and spills of gravel rallying in the beautiful scenery of the Sierra de Lobos and Sierra de Guanajuato mountains.

Drivers will be exposed to more gravel racing in Portugal and Italy before the mother of them all here in Kenya, with the traditional ruggedness, especially in Kedong stages of the fine, volcanic powder soil infamy.

French rally maestro Sebastian Ogier won his race of the year after the season-opening Monte Carlo last January showing the potential of the Toyota Gazoo Racing Hybrid Yaris where main challengers faltered or were bogged down by myriad of mechanical problems.

Mexico is significant to Kenya as the first port of call where the Safari Rally kit of the top factory teams get loaded at Port Vera Cruz before embarking on a 17,000km sea journey to Mombasa in time for the start of the WRC Safari Rally week on June 19.

The kit of over 64 containers will arrive in Mombasa in early June from where it will be cleared and loaded onto a special express cargo train to Suswa SGR station before being transported by road to the Wildlife Research and Training Institute, Naivasha.

The Mombasa/Suswa train operation has been hailed as one of the most convenient and efficient parts of WRC Safari Rally Kenya as it also showcases to the rest of the world Kenya’s advancement in transport and communication.

For the organisers, this bit, after two successful trials is now classified as a normal routine they expect to execute without any hitch.

It can only get better with the new Local Organising and Steering committees appointed by Ababu Namwamba, the Ministry of Youth, Sports and the Arts which has re-confirmed its commitment to ensuring a smoothly organised, state supported Safari Rally.

This is coming against the backdrop of the Equator Africa Championship Rally a week ago in Voi, taken there by the Kenya Motor Sports Federation as one of its strategic plans to promote the sport in various parts of the country.

The new LOC team under rally driver Carl Tundo, assisted by Brian Mutembei, joined hands with the WRC Safari Rally secretariat to organise the Voi Rally as a dry run to prepare the Safari’s sports arm departments to revitalise all its organs in readiness for the scoop of work that lays ahead in this year’s Safari.

The LOC’s main agenda is to explore ways of raising new revenue streams while cementing traditional ones as the WRC Safari Rally remains one of the most prominent sporting events on the African continent.

There are many stakeholders who make the Safari happen with many enjoying the windfall without investing in anything.

A good example is Nakuru County, the epicentre of the week-long Safari Rally carnival, valued in excess of Sh63 billion as an economic product.

The county last year imposed unwarranted trade licenses on the Safari organisers and business people when it should have been at the forefront in offering incentives and rebates to the WRC Safari as a way of uplifting the economic well-being of the county.

But it is refreshing to note a change of heart and ways of doing things with the new governor Susan Kihika organising economic seminars and inviting the WRC Safari Rally for their input and collaboration.

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