Marcy Porsche win Safari prologue

Other than on the forthcoming IRC Rallye Monte, for the East African Safari the prologue stage times are added to the actual competition. And therefore even Sunday’s Mombasa town centre show start and 20km prologue stage was all that happened today, this is counted as day1 of the 10 days rally.

 

The show start was in Mombasa’s main street below the famous elefant tusks On Sunday at 13:00hrs. This was followed to another lazy party like do on the Indean Ocian beach, leading directly into the 20km prologue stage. For a Safari Rally this stage was surprisingly technical with many tight corners and slow average speeds. Some drivers found the going very tough, as not only was the stage technical, but it was typical Safari Rally when it comes to surface. Conditions were dry today, but deep, soft sand between exotic bushes made it difficult to keep the cars going in this slow, technical stage.

   

The winner of the stage is Belgian Gerard Marcy with well known co-driver Stéphane Prevot in his bright green Porsche 911. This means the former Dakar Lada works driver now led every single of the four East African Safari Classic editions at some point! Gerard Marcy will thus also be the first car on the road when the rally starts proper tomorrow (Monday). It is debatable if he actually did himself any favours with this. Other than the known WRC dramas, the Safari Rally is very diverse. First on the road was often regarded as an advantage, as this meant you are the only driver having a dust free run. However if it is wet, first is the last place you want to be, as in high speed sections or before water crossings the lines left by the previous cars give you a good warning about the hazards ahead and i.e. how to approach a certain water puddle, mud bath or pot holed section. With the action going into the famous, grassy Taita Hills tomorrow, you are almost guaranteed to not find any dust, but when the weather is wet your problems are the more extreme. Gerard Marcy comments on the prologue stage; "There were some soft places in there with sand. I thought my tyres were all on very low pressures or something as there was no acceleration and no braking, but it was just the feel that surface gave.”

   

Marcy even won the prologue by quite some marging, while in 2^nd and 3^rd place we have split by only 1 second Stefano Rocca and Ian Duncan. Italian descent but Kenyan resident Stefano Rocca drives the same Datsun 240Z he drove on the last EA Safari Classic in 2007 and in fact in the IRC Safari in Easter 2009. Rocca hardly missed a Safari Rally since the 1997 WRC edition, where he came 9^th overall and groupN winner in a Subaru Impreza. Ian Duncan in turn is the last Kenyan to win the Safari Rally as a WRC event, in 1994 when driving for the Toyota works team. Duncan such is a Kenyan rally legend and he tries to keep his mythic name in driving the most powerful car entered in this year East African Safari: A huge Ford Mustang 5.0 V8! If he can come 3^rd fastest on this tight and twisty prologue stage, what will he be doing in this monster once the roads open up? In 4^th place overall after the prologue and in the starting order tomorrow is another legend, the first World Rally Champion (1979) Björn Waldegaard in his Porsche, who starts at number 47 and with a new to him navigator after pre event car problems.

 

Further down the order 6^th place is shared between Steve Perez / Datsun 260Z, who just flew in from driving a Stratos in the Roger Albert Clark Rally, and Kronos team owner Jean-Pierre Mondron / Porsche 911. Mondron really loved the twisty stage: "I enjoyed that section and I feel it really suited the Porsche. But I am learning Africa, indeed I am eating quite a lot of it with all thus dust ."

   

It is surprising, even this short section – we talk the first 20km of a 4500km event – already claimed the first victims, however all can continue the rally.

 

Britain’s Steve Troman / Porsche 911, seeded number 8 he finds himself starting 24^th tomorrow after going off. But he has a very valuable theory: "a bit tough and I understeered off at one point which cost us a bit of time but I suspect that in the grand scheme of things, thirty seconds will not matter too much in a week's time."

   

Jayant Shah / Lofty Drews / Datsun 260Z are a really legendary line up. Shah finished twice in the top5 as a Nissan works driver on WRC Safaris. Lofty Drews is an even bigger legend, he won the first WRC Safari alongside Shekhar Mehta in a Datsun 240Z in 1973 and in the following years he finished on the podium twice alongside Sandro Munari in a selection of Lancia works cars and then 4 more podium finishes alongside Rauno Aaltonen in Datsuns and last his altogether 8^th podium finish again with Aaltonen in an Opel Manta 400 in 1984. All this experience could not avoid the team collecting a puncture in this short stage today and dripping to 30^th place. Lofty’s excuse: The puncture was on Jayant Shah’s side of the car!

   

A rattled start also for the French team of Renault Alpine A110s. The team felt their cars could actually be lowered, as road conditions are better than expected. That is good news, as to be honest the A110 looks a bit silly with a high suspension. The team boss and preparator of the 2 Alpines is actually former Formula1 star Eric Comas. He flew down as team manager and before he knew it he found himself as a driver in the event when the originally scheduled driver for the N° 26 car fell ill. So Formula 1 driver goes Safari rallying? The story turned sour sooner than we expected. But was it the drivers fault? The lowering of the car? Eric Comas finds himself on the retirement list following a broken driveshaft. However this being a 10day 4500km classic rally, “superally” actually makes sense and – other than silly WRC – is operated in max times per unfinished stage, while the crew can re-join at any time they are fit again, such the extend of damage and not the time of day decides on the extend of penalties. Comas will start again tomorrow

   

Also on the retirement list for uncomfirmed reasons is one of the two big and powerful Mercedes SLCs. The Merc that survived struggled with the twisty road and only came 18^th, the 300BHP 5 litre V8 coupé sandwiched between Datsun 180Bs.

   

So here we have a problem of the seeding decided by a prologue. Around 90% of the field will start the first real big leg in the orders of the prologue. However the organisers decided to re-seed some cars, as i.e. the Merc SLCs and Comas’ Alpine on grounds of safety. Maybe the difference to Monte Carlo is that in the Safari Rally we face stages of up to 100km. It is difficult to keep fair when manual reseeding is done other than the prologue results, but it seems it is a thing that needed to be done in the Safari Rally at least.

   

Tomorrow’s challenge and route:

   

Day2 is the 1^st day proper. And already the first curiousity in the myriad of potential layouts this rally can deliver. The last East African Safari Classic in 2007 moved straight from Mombasa to Nairobi. Another potential start option from Mombasa is to follow the coast line into Tanzania. The 2009 route again has Tanzania on the agenda first, but still the first proper day leads us towards Nairobi. It is actaully a shorter day ending in the Taita Hills half way between Mombasa and Nairobi, and from here the rally will then continue into Tanzania the day after, crossing the border in Taveta, unusual for the rally, this is south of Mount Kilimanjaro but nowhere near the coast, north of the Usambaras

   

Day2 will kick off again with the same twisty 20km stage that was the prologue today. From here however it goes straight into the Taita Hills for 2 more very long stages. The Taita Hills can maybe be best described as this:

 

A strange scenario as the surface is vulcanic rock. Taita Hills is a former vulcano, a little misplaced because nowhere near Rift Valley. Still, you can hardly see the road surface, so much is the area covered with farns and high grass. This stage is famous for blocked radiators and overheating engines. In the early 1980s a genius Reinhard Klein photo became famous round the world. It was a works Lancia Rally 037. That car for its plastic mid engined racer design had an auxilliaries packaging problem, meaning for the Safari Rally the spare wheel had to go onto the roof! And here it was, Taita Hills, high grass everywhere, and a sole tyre racing through the scenery! The tyre was on the roof of a Lancia, but the Taita Hills grass and farns fully covered the Lancia! As funny a thought this picture is, think for a moment about the driver’s point of view, literally! Another famous occasion gave us the first 4x4 victory on Safari ever, 1987. Many remember Hannu Mikkola’s Safari win with the huge Audi 200 Turbo Quattro. But hardly anybody remembers that this was Björn Waldegaard’s and Toyota’s rally. Björn led the rally nearly all the way through in his RWD Toyota Supra. The champagne was chilled and Toyota’s victory party was all prepared and set when on the last kilometers in Taita Hills grass blocked the radiator and Björn was stranded with a cooked engine.

   

There are more stories in history like that, i.e. describing the 504 Coupé V6 victory in 1978 in the database section of this car. Well, a traditional Safari Rally usually had start and finish in Nairobi with Tanzania usually coming towards the end. In the 1987 story also Taita Hills was the last section coming from Tanga (Tanzania coast) via Mombasa to Nairobi. The IRC Safari also starts in Nairobi, but the East African Safari Classic since its introduction always starts in Mombasa. Already last year the Taita Hills came first, but then the rally headed straight to Nairobi, with Tanzania – Tanga – Mombasa the last section. This time we turn from Taita Hills sharp left/South to Tanzania, which is an interesting twist. But that would already be day3.

   

Results after Day1:
1^st – Gerard Marcy B/Stéphane Prevot B,   Porsche 911,   15m23s

2^nd – Stefano Rocca I/Piers Daykin EAK,   Datsun 260Z,   +17s

3^rd – Ian Duncan EAK/Amaar Slatch EAK,   Ford Mustang,   +18s

4^th – Björn Waldegaard S/Iqbal Sagoo USA,   Porsche 911,   +40s

5^th – Quentin Savage EAK/Russell Savage EAK,   Datsun 180B,   +49s

=6^th – Steve Perez GB/Staffan Parmander S,   Datsun 260Z,   +1m14s

=6^th – Jean-Pierre Mondron B/Dan Erculisse B,   Porsche 911,   +1m14s

=8^th – Geoff Bell ZA/Tim Challen EAK,   Datsun 180B,   +1m19s

=8^th – Aziz Tejpar GB/Andy Nagi EAK,   Ford Escort Mk1,   +1m19s

10^th – Jonathan Savage EAK/Gavin Lawrance EAK,   Datsun 260Z,   +1m22s