Neuville shines in Monte Carlo, sets stage for exciting Safari

Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe ushered the 2024 World Rally Championship (WRC) season in style by outperforming the opposition aboard a Hyundai i20 Hybrid Rally1 at the Rallye Monte Carlo last weekend.

A new scoring points format and introduction of the Super Sunday stretched competition to the limit and re-purposed the WRC which has been in need of more excitement.

This comes 28 years since the introduction of the clover leaf format with a central service park, about the same period of time the WRC Safari Rally has been missing the Easter date although the 2010 Safari, as an Africa Championship rally, fitted into this date. Sweden, which comes three weeks from now, never does raise interest within the WRC fraternity in Africa being held in faraway Scandinavia. And for Kenyans, there is not much to anticipate from this snow conditions rally this year in absence of local participation, unlike in the 2022 and 23 editions when McRae Kimathi and Hamza Anwar flew the Kenyan flag at in the Junior WRC category. The Kenyan public anticipation is already building up, and the world over too, owing to the uniqueness of the Safari. 

Monte Carlo is held on tarmac roads up on the Alps mountains under cold weather conditions with scattered showers of night time driving. 

Rally Sweden, in the educational city of Umea far away from the capital Oslo, is all snow without proper, uninterrupted TV viewing sections.

For the wider world, the Safari serves as the first true test of the WRC on road conditions ranging from flats, tricky Savannah twists and fesh fesh sections now regarded as the signature of the WRC Safari Rally Kenya.

There is anticipation of how the rally will develop this year following recent rains. The weatherman warned earlier that these rains could extend up to March, about the same period for the March 28-31 fixture.

This is good news to Kenyans who are now getting used to the WRC Safari Rally as an annual fixture in the local sporting calendar which is ever growing with the introduction of the Kip Keino Classic Continental Tour, Sirikwa Classic international cross country championship, the Magical Kenya Ladies Open and Magical Kenya Open golf championships, inter alia. They will be closing the demanding and financially constraining first quarter of 2024 more relaxed from the financial burdens of the re-opening of schools and indebtedness caused by the festive seasons.

A spot check in Naivasha reveals full advance booking of hotels with an influx expected after Rally Sweden when Kenya will become the focal point of motorsports in the world.

The Safari is being held under a tight time frame since the International Automobile Federation’s World Motorsport Council released the 2024 calendar and brought the Safari forward by three months. 

But organisers, assisted by the Ministry of Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports, as usual, will certainly deliver a memorable Safari Rally.

Cabinet Secretary Ababau Namwamba and Principal Secretary Peter Tum have said that they will lead from the front to ensure smooth execution.

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