Safari Rallyt; More from det restday.

Car No. 5 Ian Duncan
Ian has decided that he and his Ford Mustang will not be continuing on the Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic Rally 2007. "There are ten reasons for not going on and none for continuing." the Kenyan rally star revealed at lunchtime today. "I am almost two hours behind the leader and, even with the mileage still to come, I don´t stand a hope of making it back in amongst the front runners even though the organisers have been good enough to put me fifth on the re-start list. What I do stand a chance of doing, however, is wrecking my car and winding up with absolutely nothing. I don´t like these non-reccied events where you are driving blind off navigation notes. No matter how good they are, it is never the same as having your own notes on these rough roads. Still I enjoyed myself in what we did and I am really pleased that in eleven stages, we set three fastest times."

Car No 24 Dave Kedward
Since their engine expired on the first day, Dave Kedward and Crispin Sassoon have been two men in search of an engine for a Ford Escort RS1600. Initial searches were centered on Dave´s home in the UK but when he learned that the engine in Alexander Hack´s now-retired Escort was fully healthy, he has been contacting Mark Solloway of Historic Rally Sport whose car it is to see if a transplant could be arranged so that number 24 can continue.

Double past winner of the Safari Classic, Rob Collinge, returned from the USA earlier in the week and on Wednesday combined his current sporting obsession with rallying by following the cars through to Amboseli in his gyrocopter.

Fred Gallagher, Clerk of the Course on the Wales Rally GB, has taken time out of his busy schedule [the Rally GB starts in ten hours time] to point out that we were a tiny bit wide of the mark when we quoted Bjorn Waldegård as saying after the first day that he had not been in the Taita Hills since "the mid-1980s". Fred´s comment was that "Well, he drove me round them every year from 1986 to 1992 !". And to good effect too since Bjorn and Fred did compete on seven Safaris on the trot in those years and won in 1986 and 1990, finished fourth on two occasions - 1989 and 1991 - were seventh in 1988, and retired in 1987 and 1992.

It would be churlish of us not to mention the means by which we are able to send you this information, even from the remotest of the Safari lodges. Jonathan Somen, the Managing Director of Access Kenya, has provided the hardware plus a support crew to ensure that we can have a reliable Internet connection every day. There was a slight worry yesterday when the mini-bus transporting the Wi-Fi set-up wizard to Amboseli developed a problem, but that old-fashioned technical hitch has been the only one so far.


» Pressrelease från Safarirallyt, www.eastafricansafarirally.com.

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