The Voi Rally was one of the fastest rounds of the season with crews tackling smooth and technical roads in the hills of Taita Taveta County. The event also went down in the Kenya National Rally Championships history as the first rally to embrace carbon neutral status.
While some found the route extremely fast, others exercised caution as there was no room for error. Manvir Baryan being first on the road said conditions did not suit his machine, much as the grass was too long and the car was overheating.
“We had to stop midway through all stages to clear the grass, except the 16km. Other than that, I think the stages were really good and we had fun,” said Baryan. Pavit Kenth who finished 10th overall driving the ex-Carl Tundo’s EVO9 said: “The mindset for this rally was to push from the start.
Stage one went well and we were surprised with the time we managed given that we went off and stalled and the centre diff was not working.’’
He added: “We got more consistent in the next stages and managed to up our pace, but going into the second loop of Stage Five, we hit a slow dip too fast and ended up nose diving the car.
From here, we took it easy and decided it was better to finish than to risk any more damage to the car.” Alastair Cavenagh who finished fifth overall was happy to finally get the Proton to the end in an event. “Full kudos to Jim Heather Hayes who has worked tirelessly to make the car reliable.
Unfortunately, it has not got a height top speed, only pulling 176kmh so it was not competitive on the high speed Voi event . Hopefully, the reliability will continue and we can start to post competitive times once again,” said Cavenagh. Alex Lairang’I of Team Delights was at one point leading in 2WD but retired as the rally wore on.
“We were doing so well and enjoyed each and every stage that we tackled until the car developed electrical issues just a kilometre into stage five which forced us out. We plan to approach the rest of the events with the same pace aiming for podium finish,” he said.
Leonardo Varese was also happy to win the Mombasa Motor Club rally in the 2WD Class for the first in his career. This was his 13th career win which took him to the top of 2WD standings.
Courtesy of mediamaxnetwork.co.ke