Despite the chaotic scenes from Saturday’s morning loop of Safari Rally Kenya stages, Hyundai sporting director Andrew Wheatley says the worst is still to come.
With rain expected through the afternoon – and the roads running rougher and more rutted after the first pass of cars, Wheatley said the teams would be rolling the dice in the afternoon.
“I think this is classic Kenya,” he said, “and we haven’t done the hard loop yet. We still have the hard loop to come. So from our perspective, it’s been an incredibly challenging morning. We knew this morning that this would be the pivotal [day]. We actually thought the stages immediately after lunch will be pivotal, but this is significantly more difficult than we imagined.”
While the three factory Hyundais sit in second, third and fourth places, all three i20 N Rally1s have suffered overheating issues – but Wheatley said the issue was not exactly the same as on Thursday’s Camp Moran opener.
“It’s very similar,” he said. “It’s the same result, the same result is that the radiator has a lot of mud stuck in it because of the high temperatures under the bonnet. At the end of Camp Moran, we had no problem, it was the stage after that we actually had the problem – so that’s why it’s not exactly the same challenge, but it is in exactly the same area.
“We have the same issue across all the cars. The drivetrain is under pressure, let’s say the high temperatures and the difficult conditions have put the whole drivetrain under pressure.”
Despite those issues, Wheatley remained optimistic about changes being made to the cars.
He added: “I think the guys have been prepared for this for the weekend. We’ve been doing some more changes last night. We’re planning some more changes [for] this afternoon’s loop. But yeah, this is real engineering on the hoof a little bit.
“These are not conditions that you can replicate in Europe easily. And that’s why all of the competitors are having this kind of problem. We have another dice to throw this afternoon.”
