WRC Safari Rally 2021
19 years! That’s how long it’s been since we last had the iconic safari rally on home soil. You’ve probably seen the iconic photo of one of the rally cars mid air, shadowed by a majestic Kilimanjaro in the background with 2 maasai men stood to the right of the frame, that’s what comes to mind when I remember the rally. I’m certainly not old enough to recall the 50s when it was called the East African Coronation Safari in celebration of the Queen (thank Heavens those days are past us) and not old enough either to recall the 60s when it was the East African Safari Rally until 1974 when it ultimately became the Safari Rally. What I can recall though, are stories of my dad telling me where he was when Patrick Njiru, Joginder Singh, Shekhar Mehta and Ian Duncan were tearing it up across the country. The rally used to be that one thing that provided a speed and adventure fix for most Kenyans back in the day. So, when it was confirmed that we’d be hosting the Safari Rally in 2021, I had to make sure I was present so that I also tell my kids where I was when Sebastian Ogier, Thierry Neuville, Carl Flash Tundo, Baldev Chager and company were tearing it up across Naivasha, Elementaita and Soysambu. This is a visual diary of what was the rally weekend, so kids, in future when you ask me where I was when the rally came back to Kenya after a long hiatus and say “Dad, pics or it didn’t happen!”, I have “receipts” for you to see.
Thursday
Day 1 began at KICC for the flag off by the President to officially start the event. Managed to capture some of that activity as well as some driver interviews of Sebastian Ogier, Thierry Neuville, Takamoto Katsuta and Ott Tänak.
Friday
Friday began with an early moring departure at 4AM to Kedong where the spectator stage was set up. What they don’t tell you is that a rally weekend involves little to no sleep to get to the spectator stages early enough to avoid being locked out. So, if snoozing is that one thing you’re a master of, just forget rallying.
Sunrise at Kedong
My good friend Nesh, who introduced me to motorsports, is the biggest rally fan I know and you can see he was ready!
You could smell the excitement in the air as everyone began holding their position ready for the action.
The first session was then red flagged after an accident involving Tejveer Rai and his co driver at a similar area to where his brother had an accident a few years ago. He was airlifted to hospital and is currently recuperating. We wish him a speedy recovery and hope to see him back racing. We were back underway for some more action and my word, did the drivers not disappoint as they gave us a taste of what to expect on Saturday.
Saturday
Saturday was another early start involving a traffic snarl up at 5AM on the Nairobi-Nakuru Highway as fans made their way to Elementaita and Soysambu. I had never seen anything like it. I‘m used to traffic in the PM but morning traffic was something completely unheard of, unless you live in a household where you share one toilet and all of you had a bad food experience the previous night, I do not wish that on my greatest enemy! Luckily, my team and I managed to get into Soysambu Conservancy and positioned ourselves bright and early at Turn 15 where we caught the action through out the day.
Motorsports is a new genre of photography for me so I decided to challenge myself and capture some slow shutter panning photos. I chose the WRC cars to try this out on... well, why? Because the WRC cars are insanely quick & powerful clocking speeds of upto 193kph (as Takamoto Katsuta did) on dirt roads! Trying to keep up with them was not an easy task as each driver had their own strategy on approaching the braking point at Turn 15. I’m not ashamed to admit that out of some 348 pictures I took, these were the only ones that looked presentable. I think they turned out okay but will definitely get some more practice in to improve.
These were all shot on the Canon EOS R6 with a 70-200 F4L II & a 100-400 at 1/125 sec on Shutter priority (TV) mode.
The afternoon session brought with it a craving for more dust action and I put myself to work closer to turn 15 .
The day ended with my face and my clothes powdered up in layers of dust and let me tell you, it felt so good to get dirty! Were you at a rally if you went back home looking like you’d only just stepped out to go to the shop? The consequence of my craving for dust is that my camera and lenses are now in need of a thorough cleaning job.
Sunday
Sunday was staged at the iconic Hells Gate National Park, with the best action at the turn featuring the iconic Fischer’s Tower, a climber’s dream, down to the finish line. I have PTSD from this rock… maybe one day I’ll tell you about how my photographer friends and I ended up surrounded by a pack of hyenas while attempting to set up our cameras for some astro photography with Fischer’s tower as our foreground….
And that is my visual diary to my kids and to you, who’s made it this far. It was a great pleasure having the chance to document this historic event and there’s even greater news as we’re now going to be hosting the safari rally for the next 5 years until 2026. I hope to get accreditation to get even closer to the action next year and have better images to show my kids and you, the reader.
I do hope that we can come up with a solution to the problem that will be the damage done to our wild spaces by people littering as a result of this event, while I do not intend to be a party pooper, I shudder at the thought of us forgetting the importance of conserving wild spaces and ruining the environment for our wildlife and our wild spaces.
See you next year!
You can see more fantastic coverage of the WRC Safari Rally by Kenyan photographers such as Mwarv, Brian Kigen, Anwar Sidi, Magunga, Cedi, Alvin, Kitots. Click on their names to see their work!
Note: All images are Copyright © Peter Ndung’u. Contact me on hello@peterndungu.com for usage.