Back to News
Five Tuthill-built Porsche 911s started the penultimate day of the East African Safari Classic Rally 2015 inside the top ten. We were now just hours away from the finish. Blomqvist/Prévot still held the lead from Goransson/Axelsson, both crews in cars built by Tuthills.
“We probably cannot be beaten by outright speed now,” said Richard, “but that doesn’t make it any more comfortable. In fact it’s terrible. You wait at the end of every stage, charged with nervous energy. All you want to see at stage end is a blue car, followed very quickly by a white one.
“We’re starting to put a few more spares in the cars and your mind starts going crazy with ‘what-ifs’: where are the problems going to come from? We’re approaching the end of the rally and fatigue is setting in, so things just get harder and harder. This will be a tough couple of days, with a mammoth stage to finish the rally, but everything’s in great shape. We could not be any better off.”
Day eight – November 26 – was a shorter day: part one of our run back to Kenya, with an overnight stop at Taita Hills before the final chequered flag in Mombasa on day nine. With one stage (CS20) cancelled, the leaders traded blows on the two remaining stages, finishing just five minutes apart after more than thirteen hours of competitive rallying, through the toughest terrain on the planet. Our last day would be a fast one.
Safari Classic Rally 2015: The Final Day
For nine days every two years, we wake up in Africa as part of the physical and emotional rollercoaster that is the Safari Classic Rally: an epic event, soaked in soaring delight or total despair, sometimes both in the space of one morning. We start each day excited that our cars will once again rally through this glorious wilderness until, on day nine, it stops. This is a pivotal moment in the Safari experience.
“It’s awful, but amazing,” said Richard. “Our clients are running well, we have two cars at the top of the leaderboard and everything is going well. It is an amazing position but we have nothing to win and lots to lose. Everyone around me is doing their job very professionally, so we’ll continue to deal with whatever happens and end up where we end up. All being well, we’ll get safely through.”
The final three stages were tough. Blomqvist/Prévot added ninety seconds to their lead on the first, with a further twelve minutes on the second, as Goransson/Axelsson struggled with transmission issues. The pursuers took seven minutes back in the day’s final stage, but the die had been cast: Stig Blomqvist and Stéphane Prévot were the winners. Seven of the top eleven finishers were Tuthill-built Porsche 911s.
Competing in his first-ever East African Safari Classic Rally, Gilberto Sandretto finished an exceptional eleventh overall alongside the great Fabrizia Pons. Further down the field, two of our rolled 911s also crossed the finish line: David von Schinkel/Per Bjorkman and Roger Samuelsson/Robin Friberg, who set a second-fastest stage time en route to the finish.
At the end of nine days and thousands of kilometres, we returned to Whitesands, where the rally had started. As each rally car to finish crossed the podium in turn, all of the teams turned out to cheer their fellow competitors and experience one final rush of Safari camaraderie. We had enjoyed an incredible rally with our incredible team from all over the world and clinched our second East African Safari Classic Rally win. The work towards the next East African Safari Classic Rally had already begun.
[cincopa A4OAxX9UbhT7]
