How a Safari storm spliced and split one WRC stage

For four drivers, the final Safari Rally Kenya stage of Saturday looked pretty similar to the first run through Sleeping Warrior and indeed the other five tests of the day. But for the rest, they faced a dark, wet and windy trial that well and truly ticked the final box to confirm that this is the Safari of old.

Due to running under SuperRally rules, retirees Dani Sordo (Hyundai), Elfyn Evans (Toyota), Lorenzo Bertelli (M-Sport Ford) and Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota) were the first into the 19.28-mile test – the rally’s longest – and did so with threatening clouds on the horizon.

Usually they would be setting off three minutes apart, but on the rough and dusty gravel of Kenya they were being sent in with gaps of four minutes. This played a huge factor in what happened next.

In the dry, the stage was taking close to 17m25s to complete. It starts in Elmenteita and goes east for over a mile before lengthy straightaways heading south for a couple of miles, and then comes back north. That’s roughly repeated to form a ‘W’ shape of the landscape from its starting point. Then there’s a surface change for the final sector on abrasive volcanic-type broken up rock.

Drivers could see the inbound weather at the bottom of the ‘W’ as they headed south for the first time, but were then clueless for a couple of miles as they went back north, and then headed south again to be confronted with a mass of rain and changing grip levels.

But with very few corners before reaching the bottom of the ‘W’ again, they didn’t know the extent of the conditions until hitting the brakes hard for that switchback.

For Rovanperä, going into the stage 12 minutes after Sordo was actually a blessing as the wind picked up and stopped there being any hanging dust, and the light rain that did arrive made the top level of soil and volcanic dust more compact, therefore making it grippier and reducing sliding on the surface. Reducing the lateral movement reduced the risk of the Finn hitting the vast amount of rocks bordering the roads.

M-Sport Ford duo Adrien Fourmaux and Gus Greensmith were next in, and with normal WRC gaps they both would have only caught the rain closer to the end of the stage – where the surface is so rough they’re travelling at near-to road section speeds anyway.

Instead, the extra two minutes between Rovanperä and Greensmith’s stage entries led to the latter encountering one hell of a west-bound storm moving in at around the 10-mile mark, while Fourmaux got the worst of it once he was past the high-speed run to the hairpin.

“I was like controlling my pace, no issues, no worries, opening a gap,” said Greensmith. “And then I got like halfway through that stage and next thing you know I had full rain and it was the slippiest conditions I’ve ever driven in by a million miles. I touched the brakes, I go faster.

“Literally I went [off] as I first got the full rain, so I had no corners to feel the grip. I touched the brakes, and all four [wheels] locked and I just went straight off into the field and lost maybe 10 seconds. After that I managed it, but  I had to get it after a 650-meter straight, and then the first test of grip I got was the braking.”

Fourmaux said he couldn’t see even with his wipers on, so “it was just the pacenotes and driving fast”. But those behind had it worse.

Ott Tänak’s visibility totally went when the windshield of his Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC fogged up on his side, and he was dependent on co-driver Martin Järveoja being his eyes while also reading the notes.

Eventually they stopped on stage to fix the issue, after opening windows to no avail, and they dropped over two minutes to Sordo. And because of the windshield issue, the wet surface was not his biggest worry.

“This [lack of grip] was the least problem, you know,” he said. “The slippy was not really too much of an issue.”

Sébastien Ogier ran between Greensmith and Tänak, and was told by his Toyota team “only a few drops” of rain were inbound.

“But unfortunately after a couple of kilometers it started to pour heavily and it was like incredible conditions, like driving on ice on some sections,” Ogier revealed.

“And on a very fast straight I started to lose the car in the straight, it was crazy. So I’m happy I managed to keep the car on the road in this moment without drama. It also allowed us to gain a position tonight as Ott hit trouble.”

But Ogier was not without drama, as he got caught out on the same corner as Greensmith.

“Same corner I made it just, just quite, it was crazy,” said Ogier. “We were coming flat down the hill sixth gear, maybe around 180km/h [111.8mph], and then hit the brakes like more than 200 meters before a third-gear corner, so you should be way too early to brake there.

“But at the end I just started to slide, lost the car for maybe 100m and managed somehow to slow it down and just make the corner a bit wide. Some sections we knew that here when it starts to rain heavily that it can be like ice, and yeah it’s confirmed.”

The surface had gone from being compacted to being pushed into clodges of wet earth, and as the clouds moved it meant the first bottom of the ‘W’ was getting rained on at a roughly similar time. Which for the drivers starting eight and 12 minutes after Ogier meant double trouble as they didn’t just have to worry about the corners. Now the holes on the long straights were filling with water.

Takamoto Katsuta, the penultimate World Rally Car in, confessed: “I’ve never been in that kind of stage [before], exactly same thing my co-driver Dan [Barritt] said. He has so much experience, but he said ‘I never, ever have been in that kind of condition and feel like that’.”

Katsuta couldn’t use the banks to find grip in a straight line or to slow down entering a corner due to the rocks, and wasn’t on the right tires for the weather either.

“I had to be more careful – like if it’s drowning, it’s drowning, so it’s OK. But this kind of stuff I could still could be better. But yeah, it was proper Safari Rally. 100 straight, you don’t say anything.

“Big, big water, everywhere water, like standing water. You’re just avoiding and you don’t know where you are, it was quite crazy.”

He and Thierry Neuville, last in for Hyundai, had already lost half a minute in the wet at the splits where Greensmith and Ogier had been making gains on Sordo in the dry, and the only positive was the westmoving storm left them with a slightly drier stage finish.

“Of course I knew other drivers also had rain because I saw some lines, but only from very few cars, maybe one or two,” said Neuville.

“I also knew that after three kilometers in the stage I got big, big rain and I could easily see that I was the only one passing in the rain because there was no line at all. So I was realizing to lose time already there and it could get only worse because if the others got the rain, I would get more.

“A couple of straight lines was full standing water so I knew I was losing time and actually I was. The only thing I could do was driving faster than anybody else.”

That’s what he did, going faster than anyone over the final 3.5 miles to punch in the sixth-fastest time and somehow add another 22.4s to his rally lead over Katsuta.

Had the gaps between cars entering the stage been three minutes, Neuville would have avoided the early miles in the wet but perhaps not had the tire life for the abusive final sector. And he still dropped 10.5s to Ogier, who is now up to third place and convinced the drama isn’t over yet.

“That’s the characteristic of this rally. So tomorrow is still very rough sections,” Ogier concluded.

“Today maybe it was less rough of the rally, but tomorrow it is back to some very rough parts where it’s going to be again about surviving it.”

Drivers who encountered rain (showing gains against Neuville’s splits)