Sébastien Ogier has grabbed his first stage win of Safari Rally Kenya since Thursday’s superspecial with Adrien Fourmaux an impressive second-fastest on SS9, but Thierry Neuville has further extended his lead.
Ogier is in fourth overall, 1m43.9s adrift of Neuville’s lead, and punched in a strong time on Soysambu to beat the Hyundai by 6.4s. That was despite trying to “drive clean” and having to “brake a lot” for animals on the stage.
Slowing down for wildlife was a common theme for drivers on SS9. Takamoto Katsuta enjoyed seeing them, despite the damage they did to his stage time. He lost 1.2s to Ott Tänak behind him but has over 30s in hand in second place still. Neuville leads by 28.9s.
“It’s just continuing my job, I know what to do so nothing special,” Katsuta said of his target for the day, before talking about his animal adventures.
“Did you see the zebra on my onboard? I lost quite a lot of time to zebras, but nice to see them on the stage. It’s a good safari park.”
Fourmaux put in a really strong time on SS9, 4.2s slower than Ogier, electing to pick up his pace as the stage wasn’t as rough as some others. It all feeds into his game plan where he wants to just manage his own rally.
“In this stage we knew it wasn’t rough so we know we can push, and it’s what we did,” the M-Sport driver clarified.
“Sometimes I accept to lose time, sometimes I know I can push and this one we can so it was really nice.”
He was 10.3s quicker than team-mate Gus Greensmith – who’s 23.3s ahead overall – after a “pretty cautious” run for the Briton.
“With a few rocks, maybe [we] could’ve been a bit more aggressive but didn’t want to take a wheel off,” Greensmith reasoned.
Photo: M-Sport World Rally Team
Kalle Rovanperä was fighting for the lead on Friday before getting stuck in fesh-fesh on the day’s final stage, and eventually retiring. He finds himself still in seventh despite not completing all of Friday’s mileage, and has no interest in gambling for more.
“Today we just try to keep this position and avoid all the problems,” he said. “It’s quite rough on the stages again so I’m quite slow.”
Elfyn Evans and Dani Sordo were again closely matched on SS9, running at the head of the running order due to their corresponding retirements on stage three yesterday.
Sordo’s Hyundai was 2.4s slower than Evans’ Toyota on Soysambu; both drivers looking to just bring their cars to the end and see what manufacturer and personal powerstage points they can collect later this weekend. The pair are split by 19.5s in 19th and 20th place.
SS9 times
1 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota) 14m11.9s
2 Adrien Fourmaux/Renaud Jamoul (M-Sport Ford) +4.2s
3 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +6.4s
4 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +7.8s
5 Takamoto Katsuta/Daniel Barritt (Toyota) +9.0s
6 Gus Greensmith/Chris Patterson (M-Sport Ford) +14.5s
Leading positions after SS9
1 Neuville/Wydaeghe 1h46m38.8s
2 Katsuta/Barritt +28.9s
3 Tänak/Järveoja +1m00.4s
4 Ogier/Ingrassia +1m43.9s
5 Greensmith/Patterson +2m14.8s
6 Fourmaux/Jamoul (M-Sport Ford) +2m38.1s
7 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +10m06.9s
8 Onkar Rai/Drew Sturrock (Volkswagen) +15m13.3s
9 Karan Patel/Tauseef Khan (Ford) +20m27.3s
10 Carl Tundo/Timothy Jessop (Volkswagen) +25m06.9s
