It may not have featured quite as many retirements as had been expected by many, but the World Rally Championship’s third visit to Africa in the modern era certainly didn’t disappoint.
Safari Rally Kenya delivered plenty of action and lots of intriguing storylines to keep us occupied over the coming weeks before it all kicks off again in Estonia.
But for now, here’s what we learned from round seven of this year’s WRC:
Toyota is the undisputed king of Kenya
To lock out the top four positions on a rally is incredible. But to do that on two consecutive iterations of an event is simply sensational.
Take a bow all at Toyota Gazoo Racing.
Victory on this year’s Safari was Toyota’s 10th on the Safari in the WRC (twice as many wins as second-best Mitsubishi can boast), and third 1-2-3-4 finish. It also remains unbeaten in Kenya since the event was re-added to the WRC calendar in 2021 after a 19-year hiatus.
All four of the team’s drivers understood the assignment, and the car proved reliable. Punctures sidelined both M-Sport drivers and two Hyundais were sidelined with mechanical drama, but Toyota had it covered.
The result is historically relevant but important for current affairs too, as Toyota extended its lead in the manufacturers championship to 42 points over Hyundai.
Toyota’s team order strategy has its risks
No matter the situation, Toyota is sticking to its guns. While Hyundai has crafted a very clear championship strategy geared towards maximizing Thierry Neuville’s points haul, Toyota has adopted the ‘let them race’ approach.
It’s a popular move with drivers and fans alike, but Safari Rally Kenya proved that it does have its risks.
Asking a driver as accomplished as Sébastien Ogier to yield and let his team-mate pass and take a rally win from him would be a brave call. Equally, telling the reigning world champion Kalle Rovanperä he’s not allowed to fight his part-time team-mate, who doesn’t need championship points for himself, wouldn’t have landed well either.
But with its four cars locking out the four top positions and on course to make history (doing so for the second year in a row in Kenya), the on-the-edge driving and building friction between its two world champions caused headaches Toyota team management could have done without.
This isn’t an argument to suggest that Toyota should copy Hyundai’s strategy – after all it all worked out in the end.
But perhaps the events of the Safari’s final morning do further convince Hyundai that its chosen tactic is definitely best as it eliminates avoidable stress.
Estonia/Finland key to Neuville’s title bid
Just over three weeks ago, a matter of hours after winning Rally Italy Sardinia, Thierry Neuville was looking beyond even last weekend’s Safari Rally Kenya and to the WRC’s back-to-back speed fest in Estonia and Finland.
As two weaker events for him, he knew Kenya would be critical for his championship bid against points leader Rovanperä who’s a certified contender on both high-speed rallies.
Unfortunately, Neuville didn’t gain any ground. Instead, he saw his 25-point deficit grow to 47.
The Hyundai driver was powerless to prevent his initial slide – bolts on the top mounts of his suspension letting go on Friday ruling him out, meaning the best he could manage was eighth. That was until he got disqualified for illegal recce practice.
But the net result is that if Neuville wants to become the 2023 World Rally champion, he’s going to need to drive out of his skin next month on rallies that don’t pander to his strengths.
Estonia/Finland key to Tänak’s title bid
A copy and paste title was a nice and easy job for me on my keyboard, but like Neuville, Ott Tänak’s championship challenge is looking far from nice and easy – albeit for different reasons.
Estonia and Finland aren’t issues for Tänak, they’re heaven. If there were any two events you’d back the 2019 world champion on, it’s them.
But the Tänak and M-Sport package hasn’t been as comfortably quick as the Rovanperä/Toyota axis, which makes recovering his 42-point deficit complicated to say the least.
Tänak proved last year in Finland that he is capable of driving out of his skin to secure a result though, so even if he doesn’t feel too confident himself there’s no reason to believe he can’t win both Estonia and Finland.
At the very least though he’s going to need to start outscoring Rovanperä (he hasn’t since Croatia) if he’s to stop the reigning champion going back-to-back.
Hyundai has a big propshaft problem
Lappi and propshaft became two buzz words of this year’s Safari Rally Kenya. Right from as early as shakedown – and that was even earlier last weekend, running on Wednesday not Thursday – the component haunted Hyundai’s in-form Finn.
Failing on the first pass of the warm-up stage, Lappi eventually reached remote service and thought the issue was fixed, only for the part to fail again and leave Lappi stranded on shakedown for a second time.
In Hyundai team principal Cyril Abiteboul’s words, some containment measures were then made for the start of the rally which seemed to be doing the trick as Lappi was third by Saturday lunchtime – but then the propshaft failed again.
Remarkably, it took less than a stage for trouble to reappear once Lappi restarted on Sunday morning.
Abiteboul has promised investigations will be made and that work will be done – and it has to.
Neuville suggested that this issue has existed since the very birth of Hyundai’s Rally1 machine, but it really became apparent at the weekend.
The biggest concern for Hyundai now is how quickly it can implement a solid fix, given the WRC’s homologation joker system.
Solberg will simply never give up
The inability to give up is part of the Solberg family DNA. It’s therefore always been a trait instilled within Oliver Solberg – which he certainly proved with that gutsy comeback drive that almost bore fruit in Portugal.
But he was at it again in arguably even more remarkable circumstances on the Safari.
Competing purely just for experience in an older spec Škoda, Solberg didn’t really have anything to compete for. But after six stages, he was almost two and a half minutes clear of the leading WRC2 crews (who should have been of no concern to Solberg as he wasn’t registered for points).
He let some inexperience show when he picked up a puncture on Friday’s final test and failed to recognize that he’d be better off stopping to change it than continuing, causing an avoidable retirement.
But his determination to atone for that and claim a class win he could shout about was remarkable. Solberg was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of speed and in the end came two and a half a minute shy of topping the RC2 class.
WRC2 winner Kajetan Kajetanowicz was slacking off to protect his lead and secure victory, but that’s impressive nonetheless given Solberg recovered seven minutes against him.
