Evans stretches WRC Safari Rally Kenya lead as rain brings chaos

Elfyn Evans is on course to extend his FIA World Rally Championship points lead after he avoided trouble on a chaotic Saturday at Safari Rally Kenya and ended the penultimate leg with a hefty 1m57.4s advantage.

Good fortune favored the Toyota Gazoo Racing driver once again as Africa’s legendary test of endurance served up another brutal helping of carnage. From choking dust bowls to rain-soaked mud baths, Saturday presented the full spectrum of Safari extremes – and Evans was one of the few who stayed on the right side of trouble in his GR Yaris Rally1.

The Welshman started Saturday with a slender 7.7s buffer, but immediately laid down a marker on the Sleeping Warrior 1 opener. Even with rear tire damage near the end of the spectacular, 16.7-mile stage, he still extended his lead by 8.2s over teammate Kalle Rovanpera.

The Finn’s attempted response unraveled quickly. A right-front tire deflation three miles from the end of 10.76-mile Elmenteita 1 cost him 21.1s, and worse followed at Soysambu 1, where a left-front puncture dropped him another 55.5s. By the midday service break, his deficit to Evans had ballooned to 1m32.5s.

Then came the rain.

Conditions deteriorated significantly on the repeated afternoon loop, and although Rovanpera clawed back 11.7s from Evans on a sodden and muddy second run through Sleeping Warrior, he arrived at the finish with a damaged rear suspension arm. A makeshift roadside fix involving a ratchet strap kept him going, but with no choice but to back off through the final two stages, he dropped almost five minutes and slipped to fifth overall behind Hyundai’s Ott Tanak and Thierry Neuville and Takamoto Katsuta’s GR Yaris.

Evans, who arrived in Kenya holding a 28-point WRC drivers’ championship lead, is now within touching distance of his first Safari Rally victory – and a significantly increased title advantage, should he make it through Sunday’s final leg unscathed. But that’s no foregone conclusion. He ran wide in the final test and his GR Yaris sustained front-right damage – a timely reminder of how even the smallest mistake can bite back on this unforgiving event.

The drama didn’t stop with Rovanper a. In classic Safari fashion, nearly every Rally1 frontrunner faced some form of adversity.

Second-placed Tanak lost time with a deflated tire early on, then grappled with visibility issues when the windscreen of his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 fogged up on the morning’s second stage. Even so, he carries a 2m36.0s cushion – enormous by usual WRC standards, but common on the car-breaking Safari – over teammate Neuville into Sunday’s five-stage finale.

Neuville’s day w as anything but straightforward. Two punctures, a misted windscreen and a misfiring engine late in the day all combined to slow his charge – and an overnight dose of food poisoning didn’t help. But the reigning WRC champ still gained a position on the final test when Katsuta was forced to stop and change a wheel on his Toyota – his third deflation of the day. The Japanese driver has also been battling illness, making his pair of Saturday stage wins even more impressive.

Sami Pajari, still learning the Rally1 ropes after his promotion to Toyota’s factory squad for 2025, brought his GR Yaris to the overnight halt in a lonely sixth overall, 54.4s behind Neuville, but more than four minutes ahead of Gregoire Munster in the best of the M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1s. Munster began the day in 11th and even bagged a win on the day’s penultimate stage as he charged (a relative term in Saturday’s conditions) up the order.

In WRC2, the second tier of international rallying, the leading margin is very un-Safari-like, with Gus Greensmith’s Skoda Fabia RS leading the Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 of Jan Solans by just 5.8s.

Problems for overnight leader Kajetan Kajetanowicz’s GR Yaris pushed both drivers up the WRC2 order, and while Solans took the class lead through the morning stages, Greensmith gained the momentum back through the afternoon loop.

With everything still to play for, Greensmith will have to decide how much to push and how much to concentrate on finishing in the grueling conditions as he looks at the bigger picture of a WRC2 championship battle. For Solans, who’s making his Kenyan debut, the desire to push for class glory on one of the WRC’s showpiece events could make for an interesting Sunday.

This being the Safari, expect more twists on Sunday’s short, but possibly still decisive final leg. Five stages, totaling 40.93 competitive miles, lie in wait, including the rally-ending, bonus-points paying, 6.54-mile Hell’s Gate 2 Power Stage.