Safari Rally resembles "driving on the moon", says Ott Tanak

M-Sport Ford’s Ott Tanak has likened sections of this coming weekend’s Safari Rally Kenya – the seventh round of the FIA World Rally Championship – to “driving on the moon”.

Jason Craig_1

20 Jun 2023

Tanak shared his views on the characteristics of the competitive route not long after completing his recce for the iconic event, which gets underway on Thursday with a super special stage in Nairobi.

Friday’s leg comprises six speed tests, followed by a further six tests on Saturday – the longest of the weekend at 150km – and the same number on Sunday which includes the Power Stage where the five fastest crews pick up bonus points.

This is the third consecutive year that rallying’s top-flight competition is visiting the African country and Tanak believes the 2023 instalment bears many of the hallmarks of classic Safari Rally adventures from years gone by.

“Friday is quite nice, Saturday is quite a disaster and Sunday is a bit mixed,” said the Estonian, who will be the third driver to venture into Friday’s stages given his current position in the points’ standings.

“It is a definite Safari spectacle, more than we have seen a couple of years before. Last year was not too bad, maybe the year before [it was more demanding] but, for sure, some places on Saturday it is like driving on the moon and that will make it quite a big lottery.

“There is everything and just a general roughness. Sometimes it can be quite difficult to find the road – driving on the Fesh [soft sand] – and obviously we have some stones and rocks and things to contend with. In places it is actually quite difficult to understand where the road comes from. And if it rains we can expect some deep mud holes as well.

“Big parts of the road are made up of soil so rain will make it quite greasy. We have seen before it can get quite tricky when it is like this but let’s see. If the weather is similar to what we had in Sardinia then it is going to make it an even bigger challenge.”

Tanak’s push for a second World Rally Championship title suffered another setback at an unusually wet Rally Italia Sardegna earlier this month when his Puma Rally1 was sidelined early on Saturday with an electrical fault.

He did salvage four points from the end-of-rally Power Stage with a second quickest time to keep the gap to him and first-placed Kalle Rovanpera to 33 points. Asked if he was confident the fault had been fixed, the Estonian said: “Let’s see.”