The East African Safari Rally is a Classic rally event first held in 2003 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first running of the event. The Classic Safari Rally has captivated audiences for decades with its unique charm and challenging course.
The Safari Rally is an automobile rally held in Kenya. It was first held from 27 May to 1 June 1953 as the East African Coronation Safari in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, as a celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In 1960 it was renamed the East African Safari Rally and kept that name until 1974, when it became the Safari Rally.
It was first held in 1953 as a celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The event was part of the World Rally Championship from 1973 until 2002, before returning in 2021. It is historically regarded as one of the toughest events in the World Rally Championship, and one of the most popular rallies in Africa.
Today’s East African Safari Classic is an accurate reenactment of rallying in the 1970s and early 1980s. Chairman Joey Ghose, who took over just before covid hit, said he wants the Safari Classic to relive the spirit of the ’70s to mid-’80s. So he asked for long, endurance-testing stages with shorter service times to reduce the advantages of well-funded teams.
Spanning 4,100 kilometers across Kenya and Tanzania, this event is renowned as one of the world's most difficult rallies, combining the breathtaking beauty of Africa with the elegance of classic cars.
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The 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) route featured a variety of roads and terrain - from fesh fesh (very fine powdered sand), fast farm tracks, and very rough roads up or down the Great Rift Valley.
This year’s rally featured 1132 miles of flat-out, fast-as-you-dare special stages connected by 1025 miles of brisk transits. Just imagine driving from New Jersey to Montana as fast as possible-all on dirt roads. Perhaps a better comparison is running the Mille Miglia and to that adding all of the special stages from the American Rally Association’s nine-event national series (or the WRC, take your pick).
The Safari Classic originally traveled through Kenya, Uganda and what is today Tanzania, but this year it ran exclusively in Kenya. It was renamed the East African Safari Rally in 1960 following the independence of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. It joined the World Rally Championship as the Safari Rally from 1974 to 2000.
The WRC Safari Rally is back this year but works within the FIA framework, with 114 miles of special stages.
The East African Safari Classic is more than just a race; it's a celebration of camaraderie, heritage, and the adventurous spirit.
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The 10th edition of East African safari classic rally.
Event Highlights
Participants will navigate through the spectacular landscapes of Kenya and Tanzania, providing both racers and spectators with a unique mix of thrilling motorsport and breathtaking views. Iconic classic cars will traverse rugged terrains while showcasing the majestic wildlife and rich cultural tapestry of the local communities. A special invitation-only category allows enthusiasts to bring their classic cars, adding an exciting new dimension to this already unforgettable experience.
Veterans said this year’s rally was the roughest Safari they’d ever experienced. Due to U.K. travel restrictions, the rally was moved to February-mid-summer. Erosion from spring runoff was substantial, and it had not been repaired.
Stages ran right through the middle of villages in remote areas, with crowds standing alongside the road, the only road, cheering as the rally cars blasted through. The rally organizers imposed speed zones in the larger, busier villages, but smaller villages were flat-out.
The start of the rally took us through the Kerio Valley, a remote area in the Great Rift between Mount Kenya and the highlands along the Lake Victoria basin.
Auxiliary lights mounted at the foot of one or both A-pillars warned Kenyans of an approaching rally car with a unique light signature they understood. Most motorists made room and, if necessary, stopped for rally cars, often waving and giving thumbs-up. Slithering through the Kenyan cities presented its own challenge. Motorists were aware of the rally, and police held traffic at intersections to let rally cars through. Lane splitting down the middle of a hubbub was a common tactic.
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From the beginning, Kenyans dominated the standings, such was their driving skill and knowledge of the terrain. In wasn’t until 1972 that a European, Hannu Mikkola from Finland, won the Safari Rally, with massive support from Ford Motor. Kenyans remain the drivers and co-drivers to beat, taking three of the top five finishes in this year’s Safari Classic. A Safari veteran, Kenyan Baldev Chager, didn’t win a single stage but drove steadily without mistakes to win the rally in his Porsche 911. Tuthill Porsches took six of the top 10 positions.
Winning nine stages and taking second place in his first Safari was Patrik Sandell, a successful rally WRC driver from Sweden. “I’d thought I’d done some rallying,” he said during the second day.
Forty-five cars started and just 26, including Mitch and Kim McCullough’s No. We finished 23rd. A half-dozen rookie mistakes and four punctures cost us a couple of positions, but I’d have had to drive harder to improve, and that would have brought risks. Several cars rolled or crashed out of the rally, but far more suffered major suspension damage from overdriving at the wrong moment. One driver destroyed a steering rack. And, of course, some cars suffered mechanical failure.
In 1996, the event adopted the special stage format, and servicing cars from helicopters was prohibited. From that edition until 2002, it featured around 2000 km of timed stages, with stages well over 60 kilometres (37 mi) long, unlike most rallies which had under 500 kilometres (310 mi) of total timed distance. This meant that the winner's total time penalty was above 12 hours in 1996 and decreased to two seconds shy of 8 hours in 2002. From the 2003 edition, the event became part of the African Rally Championship. The event was modernised, with shorter stages and running on closed roads - like other events in the World Championship. Two editions of the rally - 2007 and 2009 - were also part of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge. On the 27 September 2019, it was announced that the 2020 edition would be part of the World Rally Championship.
Kenyan drivers Shekhar Mehta and Carl Tundo have been the most successful competitors, with five outright victories each. Mehta won first in 1973, then consecutively from 1979 to 1982 - all while the event was part of the world championship. Tundo won five editions when the event was part of the African Rally Championship - the 2004, 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2018 events.
Each day we ran three special stages connected by four transit (liaison) sections, or 24 stages over the eight days. Stages ranged from 35 to 75 miles long.
Each day began pre-dawn. We would stand, shivering in the cool morning air outside parc fermé, until 10 minutes before the start of the first transit leg. We would then hurry to our car to prepare for the day. Three minutes before counting us down-“Five! Four! When we began the transit leg, we were given an arrival time for the start of the first stage, which might be close or 160 kilometers away. Arriving late for the start of a stage brought a 1-minute penalty for every minute late.
The finish of that stage marked the beginning of the transit leg to the next stage, perhaps 30 kilometers away, but we were allowed an extra 30 minutes to get there, giving us time to stop for service. Sometimes service was within a few kilometers of the finish of a stage, sometimes it was 30 kilometers away. Service stops were busy. We would cool off with cold rags, drink water and eat something while a whirlwind of activity revolved around the car. Service stops are heavily regulated. Each rally car carries four officially issued tabards. At each service stop, our crack Tuthill crew grabbed the vests, removed and inspected each wheel and tire, put a wrench on every bolt, checked the oil, refueled the 100-liter tank, tended to any niggles, and stuffed the tabors back in the car.
Not only are the roads sinuous, but their surfaces feature a mix of loose stones and larger rocks.
Immediately before starting the rally, officials added two more devices to our car: a GPS unit and a little box we called the screamer. The GPS allowed officials to track every car’s exact location-and speed. It was programmed with the route and at times was of benefit to the co-driver. The screamer had three buttons and performed several functions. First, it screamed whenever we approached a triple-caution situation. Second, it featured an emergency button that, when pressed, would alert officials to the location of the car and alert oncoming rally cars when they approached. Third, and most annoying, it screamed when a competitor was behind us and wanted to pass. The first time it screamed was for a speed zone.
Only the driver and co-driver are permitted to work on the car outside the designated service areas. Rally cars carry tools and spares on board. Ours included a cordless impact wrench mounted on the driver’s door and a spare axle secured below the co-driver’s legs. Mechanical skills and resourcefulness can be useful. Anyone-spectators, competitors, crew-is allowed to roll a rally car back onto its wheels or push it out of a ditch or tow it out of fine silt called fesh-fesh without penalty. But that’s it. Towing a car out of a stage incurs massive penalties, a new rule intended to make the Safari tougher. Nor can anyone provide tools or parts or mechanical assistance outside a designated service area. Ken Block received a 2-hour penalty after suspension pieces were brought to his car after it was sidelined on a stage.
“The Safari can bite you,” Event Director Natasha Tundo warned us. Countless hazards awaited the unwary. Some but not all were called out in the route book. Large sections of other roads had fallen off on one or both sides. One road was obscenely rough and aggressively crowned with 4-foot ditches on each side. Concrete washes designed to channel water across the road were often shattered rubble. Dry riverbeds were full of fesh-fesh that washed out steering control in speeding cars and trapped slow-moving ones.
“Go as fast as you can when you can see,” Ryan Champion, a previous Safari Classic winner, explained. Fresh from winning the RAC Roger Albert Clark rally in another Tuthill Porsche, Champion was driving our car during a test session near Vipingo, on the Indian Ocean, a couple of days before the rally.
They were hurrying up a grassy bank. “Look! The throttle went to the floor and we gained speed, throwing up a cloud of dust as we blew past them. He pointed across a field. “Over there. See that dust cloud? Spectators greeted teams enthusiastically and, when needed, helped extract cars from hazards.
The secret to winning the Safari Classic is to be fast in the fast sections and slow enough to avoid damaging the car in the rough or tricky spots.
Before the rally, I’d secretly hoped we wouldn’t puncture any tires, but we suffered our first flat-of four total-on the first day. We’d started 25th, and the cars ahead of us had kicked up rocks. Deposited there by one of the more than 100 volcanoes dotting the Great Rift, it lay among hundreds of others just like it strewn on an uphill slog of trail that looked more like a creek bed than a road. To my disappointment, a rut grabbed our right-side tires, yanking the car over, and our right rear slammed over the cube. We made it to the next service but with a broken right-rear suspension arm and damper, a bent wheel and a split tire.
Tuthill Porsche sent 70 crewmembers in 21 vehicles to support its 13 teams.
Temperatures rose to the mid-90s as we zigzagged across the equator in mid-summer. Naturally, we ran with all the windows up to keep the dust out and, unlike one of the 240Zs, our car is not equipped with a/c. Several competitors wore driving suits, but most signed a waiver permitting cooler apparel. For me, that meant a T-shirt, shorts and high-top racing shoes, a fashionable getup. Kim wore hiking sneakers in case she needed to push the car.
Transits and special stages were open to the public. We had to watch out for boda boda-slow motorbikes traveling singly or in herds, often with a wide load or three people on board. Domestic animals were a concern: dogs, donkeys and donkey carts, herds of goats, herds of sheep, herds of cows, occasionally herders. We saw a lot of wildlife from the rally car, both in quantity and diversity, especially in Amboseli National Park. Some of the stages were dotted with elephant droppings that looked like small boulders.
The following day we saw a lioness on the move, looking hungry. We slowed and stopped for a pair of giraffes grazing on our rally route, a wisp of grassy trail through golden hills dotted with acacia reminiscent of California’s wine country. After looking at us, they turned and, as if in slow motion, sprinted across the road, moving both legs on the same side at the same time in their unusual pacing gate.
If driving was challenging, pity the poor navigator. The Safari is an old-fashioned blind rally, so no pace notes. Instead, each evening, navigators are issued route books. And each evening, she went over the following day’s 90-page route book, translating the rallymaster’s shorthand and highlighting tricky spots.
History
The Classic Safari Rally traces its origins to the legendary East African Safari Rally, first held in 1953 to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. Renowned for its grueling challenges, it quickly gained prestige, attracting elite international drivers and teams.
Dates
The endurance race is typically organized in November every two years and attracts top stars of the sport as well as those keen on glamour and wildness. The next edition is scheduled for December 5-13, 2025.
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | East Africa Safari Classic Rally |
| First Held | 1953 |
| Location | Kenya and Tanzania |
| Distance | 4,100 kilometers |
| Frequency | Every two years |
| Next Edition | December 5-13, 2025 |
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