Thierry Neuville is the first leader of the Safari Rally Kenya. The third round of the World Rally Championship (WRC) started this Thursday with a short 4.84km super special stage, and the muddy surface due to the rain has already created difficulties.
The Belgian from Hyundai completed the stage in 3m19.9s and, thus, beat his teammate Ott Tänak by just 0.1s. The champion of the last two years, Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota), was third at 0.8s, followed by his teammate Takamoto Katsuta at 0.9s.
Esapekka Lappi (Hyundai) completed the top five, already 1.5s behind Neuville. Elfyn Evans (Toyota) was sixth and Adrien Fourmaux took the best Ford from M-Sport to seventh place. He was 2.2s slower than the first-place finisher.
In WRC2, Gus Greensmith (Skoda) beat Oliver Solberg (Skoda) by 2.8s, with Kajetan Kajetanowicz (Skoda) third at 3.1s. The Polish driver came out on top in the WRC2 Challenger, a category in which he was 3.9s faster than Nicolas Ciamin (Hyundai), followed by Diego Domínguez Jr. (Citroën) at 6.5s. Hamza Anwar (Ford) is the only WRC3 driver present.
Despite being a very short stage, there have already been some incidents, such as spins or off-road excursions, including Samman Singh Vohra (Skoda) who rolled over and had to retire.
Top ten overall after SS1:
