Oliver Solberg leads Safari Rally Kenya after a dramatic pair of stages on Thursday in a Toyota 1-2-3-4-5.
A sudden downpour ahead of SS1 Camp Moran turned what had already been tipped as a key stage of the event into a monsoon.
Those at the head of the running order were at an advantage as Monte Carlo winner Solberg immediately opened up a 30s advantage over Sweden winner and championship leader Elfyn Evans.
Nobody else was within a minute of Solberg’s time, with the slowest Rally1 car, Josh McErlean, 3m57.1s behind.
Mercifully for the crews, SS2 Mzabibu was much shorter and much drier, but the big gaps established on SS1 meant there was little change to the leaderboard.
Solberg went 3.3 quicker than Evans to lead by 33.3s over the #33 GR Yaris Rally1, while third-placed Sébastien Ogier set the pace to consolidate third place over Takamoto Katsuta, who had no intercom for the entire first stage. Sami Pajari is fifth.
But despite the more consistent conditions, there were problems for four of the top-class cars as all three Hyundais, as well as McErlean’s M-Sport Ford, experienced high temperature issues.
That allowed Jon Armstrong to jump ahead of Adrien Fourmaux into seventh place, 10.3 behind Thierry Neuville and 5.9s up on the Frenchman. Esapekka Lappi is ninth with McErlean outside the top 10.
Gus Greensmith leads WRC2 and completes the top 10, but has just 3.0s in hand over Diego Domínguez. The returning Andreas Mikkelsen is 1m40.3s off the lead after running out of washer fluid for his muddy windshield on SS1.
