The longest stage of Safari Rally Kenya, Camp Moran, took no prisoners, and Oliver Solberg was one of the victims.
Leading WRC2 by 40.3 seconds prior to the stage, everything was going to plan for him and co-driver Elliott Edmondson.
But coming into a section of deep fech-fech towards the end of the stage, his Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 quickly became beached and he was stranded on the spot.
Cars coming behind were ushered around Solberg’s stricken car, and Kajetan Kajetanowicz was able to assume the category lead.
DirtFish found Solberg at the scene.
“I came out of that hairpin there and this was the first fech-fech part, and I just got stuck to be honest,” Solberg told DirtFish.
“I didn’t get warned or anything and I didn’t know about it, and yeah here I am. We bottomed out and that’s it.”
Marshalls attempted to pull Solberg’s car through the fech-fech but the tow rope was not strong enough.
“So that’s it unfortunately,” Solberg added. “It was going so well, so controlled and we had a good lead, I was just clean through the stage and was hoping to just have a clean weekend for once in Africa.
“But that’s it, that’s how it is.”
Safari Rally Kenya is the second of Solberg’s seven points-scoring rounds in WRC2. His first was in Sweden, where he took victory.
