World Rally Championship leader Toyota’s Elfyn Evans led the WRC Safari rally after day two of the championship in Niavasha. Elfyn toped the standings with a cumulative time of two minutes, zero point 45 seconds.
Evans won the Kedong and Geothermal stages to sew up the win as his Toyota team mate Kalle Rovanpera finished in second place seven seconds adrift.
Rovanperä was just 7.7sec adrift in second and might have been leading himself but for a spin on a particularly narrow section of the Kedong stage, which saw him lose time trying to get his car pointed in the right direction. Aside from that mishap, the Finn also enjoyed a relatively drama-free day.
“It’s been a difficult day and we’ve erred on the side of caution,” said Evans. “Obviously some guys have had trouble, which is unfortunate, but it’s part of the Safari. It’s a bit frustrating sometimes because you feel like you can take a bit more risk and go a bit faster, but I keep reminding myself where we are.
“It’s a shame for Ott, obviously, to have a mechanical [failure] like that. You never know in this game if it’s because the car has had an impact or if it’s just a standard failure, but it’s a shame for him because he was going well.”
Overnight leader Ott Tanak who had stormed to four stage wins and had appeared unstoppable suffered a driveshaft failure which left his Hyundai i20 N Rally 1 with only rear-wheel drive.
The Estonian lost 55.4seconds allowing Toyota to take the lead. Tanak finished the day in third position 55 seconds behind.
On Saturday the drivers will tackle a total of 146 km with six stages in Sleeping Warrior,Elementaita na Soysambu.