World Rally Championship leader Elfyn Evans has taken the early lead of the 2025 Safari Rally Kenya, winning the opening super special stage.
As has become tradition, the Safari began with Kasarani – although for 2025 it has been reversed compared to previous years.
Sébastien Ogier, Ott Tänak and Thierry Neuville are the only drivers to have won it in the past, but this year it was Evans who mastered it – beating Neuville by 1.5s in their side-by-side race.
Neuville posted the same time as two-time world champion Kalle Rovanperä meaning the pair share second place, with Tänak another 0.7s back – 2.2s off the lead.
Former M-Sport team-mates Adrien Fourmaux (now at Hyundai) and Grégoire Munster shared the fifth fastest time, with Josh McErlean seventh and Takamoto Katsuta eighth.
Drivers are choosing either not to speak in English, or not speak at all, at stage-ends this weekend as a result of discussions failing to happen yet with the FIA in the wake of Adrien Fourmaux’s fine in Sweden.
That meant there was little to no driver insight from SS1, although Toyota’s Sami Pajari did offer an entertaining miming demonstration as he pointed to a cracked windshield and shrugged his shoulders. He was the slowest of the factory Rally1 drivers in ninth.
Tänak meanwhile joked that the stage-end reporter “can take a holiday this weekend”, while his team-mate Fourmaux also lived up to his entertaining stage-end prowess, offering a simple: “Hakuna matata!”
In WRC2, Fabrizio Zaldivar set an impressive benchmark that only Oliver Solberg could beat. Solberg was quickest by 1.5, with last year’s category winner Gus Greensmith – who Solberg raced against on the stage – only fifth fastest, behind Jan Solans and Kajetan Kajetanowicz.
For the first time in modern Safari Rally history, another stage will be held on Thursday, beginning at 4.43pm local time.
