Thierry Neuville has led calls for Safari Rally Kenya to be more “specific” in the future, suggesting Safari-spec cars and a vastly different itinerary.
Drivers predicted the 2026 iteration would be the toughest of the modern era and so it proved, with heavy rainfall in the lead up to the event deepening the challenge.
None of the Rally1 drivers had a trouble-free event as half the field retired from at least one of the legs; even rally winner Takamoto Katsuta lost his intercom on SS1 and suffered a double puncture on SS7.
Neuville was one of the drivers to retire, collecting two punctures and then a driveshaft issue on SS14. He told DirtFish that drivers enjoy the challenge of the Safari, but measures should be taken to aid the competition.
“I mean, I like to rally. Everybody likes to rally and the adventure,” Neuville said. “And also in terms of the championship, it gives new images and spectacular footage, which WRC needs. I mean, those pictures with the cars in the mud go around the world. So that’s what WRC needs.
“But I also think we could make it more specific with more days of rallying, longer stages, but less stages per day. Allow service in between the stages to make it a little bit like in the past and then just allow maybe a different bumper in the front to avoid this mud going on the cooler and make it a bit stronger for protection and water splashes.
“Maybe have a bit stronger wishbone – a few little things which the car needs to survive. And that would already be much nicer for the competition. Everybody would be able to attack on a similar level and that would be nicer.”
Neuville had plenty of support from his peers around the service park.
Championship leader Elfyn Evans told DirtFish: “I think a bit more flexibility wouldn’t go amiss, especially with so much water that we have to deal with or that we have to have a bit more common sense about which sections to run and not run when weather extremes hit.”
Oliver Solberg argued that the Rally1 cars “cost 1.5 million anyway, so if you throw another two grand at it to protect your car, it doesn’t matter [for the budget]”.
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He added: “Let us be allowed, the FIA or whoever, to make the cars a little bit stronger for this fantastic adventure.
“It’s the coolest adventure we have in the year. It’s the toughest, hardest rally and it’s just a cool adventure. Just make it [the cars] a little bit stronger.”
Neuville’s Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux said it’s “clear” the cars in their current specification are not suitable for the Safari.
“The rally is so extreme and so different than the others,” he mused. “We need to have a special spec that we can be quite open class, I would say, for this rally because it’s so unique that you cannot prepare a car for only one event in a championship.”
However WRC Promoter’s senior event director, Simon Larkin, doesn’t see any need for change.
“When we brought it back, we were quite clear: we wanted this to be a modern WRC Safari. We never wanted to build extra cars,” said Larkin. “We didn’t want extra testing. We don’t want separate homologation parts or anything like that. And I think we’ve succeeded there.
“Even some of the drivers here who haven’t necessarily had the best results, they still had that sense of adventure and still had an enjoyable time. We think it’s an important part of driving, and we can hear the drivers saying: ‘I just need to get through this. I just need to get through this’. Not everything needs to be a sprint.”
Safari Rally Kenya returned to the WRC calendar in 2021 after a nine-year hiatus, but doesn’t yet have a deal in place for 2027.
