Ott Tänak has lost the lead of Safari Rally Kenya to Elfyn Evans after traversing Friday’s penultimate stage slowly due to a broken driveshaft.
Tänak has led the event since the second stage on Thursday afternoon – 46.1 seconds ahead of Evans six stages into Friday’s eight-stage loop.
But Tänak’s car left oil at the stop-line of SS8 and he was seen working heavily on his car on the road section between SS8 and SS9, and as soon as he launched onto SS9 without any vigour it was immediately obvious he was in trouble.
The Hyundai driver managed to complete the stage but lost 1m02.9s to fall to third, 16.8s behind new leader Evans.
DirtFish caught up with Tänak on the road section towards SS10, where he removed the offending driveshaft.
“It happened first day for Thierry as well, so don’t know what’s happening there, but somehow it’s hitting driveshafts at the moment,” he said.
“First it was not completely broken, it was like skipping and had some drive, but now on the stage it broke completley so it was better to take it out otherwise you can damage the engine or something else.”
The Estonian’s i20 will be rear-wheel-drive only for the last stage of the day.
“It will be full sideways!”
But Evans is under pressure from his Toyota team-mate Kalle Rovanperä, who outpaced him by 5.2s on Geothermal to lie just 11.3s behind overall.
Thierry Neuville is fourth, but without his two minutes worth of penalties – accrued from three separate incidents leaving service late, jumping a start and arriving to a stage late – he would be leading the rally by 29.5s.
Takamoto Katsuta suffered a front-left puncture and dropped half a minute but remains fifth – over one minute ahead of Sami Pajari.
