Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to discuss immediate plans for this year’s Safari Rally on Friday.
All indications from the Naivasha-based event itself – scheduled as the next round of the World Rally Championship from July 16-19 – are that it will go ahead. Regulations are published on Friday and entries open on Saturday.
Clerk of the course Gurvir Bhabra has outlined the latest developments, which included a complete route survey over last weekend.
The Kenyan government eased travel restrictions to allow Bhabra and his team to complete an inspection of the roads, now the worst of the rainy season is passing.
“We’ve had a lot of rain in the last four weeks,” Bhabra told DirtFish, “for the first time in a while the rain came when we expected it!
“It was important for us to get out with the stage commanders to go through and check the safety plan for the rally.”
Bhabra admitted the rain – which has been significant enough to raise the water level on Lake Victoria to a record-breaking height of 13.44 meters, eclipsing the 1964 high of 13.41m – would mean more work for his team in the coming weeks.
“We’ve seen a lot of vegetation growing really quickly,” he added, “we’ll give it another week or so for the rain to die down, then we’ll look to get out and cut the vegetation back and help to define the road better.
“Obviously some of the river crossings are deeper than we’ve seen before, but those will return [to more normal levels] once the rain stops.
“As you can expect, the roads out here will dry really quickly once the warm, dry weather returns. But actually, I think the stages are a bit better when they’re a little bit wet – they offer a bit more grip.”
While the event is set to run outside of the official rainy season, Bhabra said nothing could be taken for granted in terms of the weather in July.
He said: “We’ve seen days in July when it’s been fine, warm and dry one day, then chucking it down the next day, it’s quite hard to predict the weather here.”
The longest stage of the event – the 20-mile Kedong test, pictured above – is in for more significant work in an attempt to get rid of a long section of fesh-fesh. Some of the competitors in the last year’s candidate event struggled through this stretch.
“We will lay some gravel down in this part,” added Bhabra.
Many of the factory and private teams have questioned running the Safari in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, with many telling DirtFish they won’t travel if the rally runs in its scheduled date.
Kenya has reported 40 deaths from the virus, some way south of the numbers in the European countries from which the vast majority of the teams will travel.
The WRC Promoter and FIA are working with the Kenyan government and await the word from President Kenyatta.
