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Widely regarded as one of the most extreme off-road events on the World Rally Championship (WRC) calendar, the 2026 Safari Rally is living up to expectations.
Since Thursday, the world’s top rally drivers have been criss-crossing the hills and valleys, having to deal with a mix of rough gravel, unpredictable weather and punishing terrain in Naivasha.
This year’s race shifted from the traditional Nairobi stage start, allowing drivers to focus on the harsh, rocky terrain.
As of Saturday, every driver had no choice but to rapidly adapt to the newly configured high-intensity stages and fine-tune their race strategies. Mud, deep sand, jagged rocks, vast savannah sections, and the notorious fesh-fesh have all contributed to the unpredictability of stages, leaving drivers to rethink their strategies before selecting tyres for their machines.
Bearing this in mind, this year, Hankook Tire and Technology Limited, the official and exclusive supplier for the 2026 season of the FIA WRC, introduced a new soft gravel tyre specification, the Dynapro R123.
According to Hankook, this new tyre has been selected by 90 per cent of drivers from day one, having been engineered with an optimised compound that enhances low-temperature flexibility.
Considering the temperature issues that have befallen drivers in the last 3 days, the concept of the new tyre delivers improved grip, especially on wet and slippery surfaces. This has somewhat helped drivers sustain durable performances throughout the rally, with a few punctures witnessed.
First selected as an official tyre supplier in 2014 for the FIA Junior WRC and associated championship, Hankook became the official tyre supplier for all classes starting last year. They are among the few brands to sponsor two of the five major FIA world championships, including the Formula E and premier series for electric vehicle racing.
Standard Sports spoke Steven Cho, the Hankook WRC representative and competition CEO.
“A lot has changed in the one year that we’ve been here in the WRC. From last year’s Kenya specification tire, we’ve changed the gravel soft compound in the pattern, in the rubber compound, as well as the construction of the tire. So the pattern has got bigger blocks, more robust, and can handle more of the sort of rough roads that we see here. The rubber compound has gotten softer, and we’ve developed it in a way that it works better and activates better in lower temperatures,” he said.
With the rain pounding hard on some days, Cho said the new tyre was more compliant, had a little bit more movement and more grip, giving the drivers a little bit more feeling of the limit.
“And then, particularly in wet and damp conditions, it should provide better grip. The construction itself has also been changed. From a manoeuvrability perspective, it should have better drivability. Also, from a durability perspective, a little bit of flexibility, a little bit more compliance in the construction can actually help to allow the tyres to survive better in these rough stages,” he added.
Even though rally drivers are never 100 per cent satisfied, Cho said the team had received positive feedback from drivers on the new tyre.
“The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Of course, you know, we are never happy, and the drivers are never happy. We always want something better; we want to move forward. But it’s been a really big positive step in the right direction, because we take their feedback and we work with our engineers and the drivers to set the development direction,” Cho said.
Manfred Sandbichler, the Hankook Motorsport Senior Director, expressed delight at the feedback, saying development of the new tyre was informed by analysis from previous rallies and driver input.
“You learn from every rally, you know. You learn from the drivers’ comments. You learn from the tyre surface after using it. You learn from the failures. You learn from the punctures. What we have done is follow the recommendations and the guidelines from drivers and engineers. That’s the reason why we brought a new, softer tyre here to survive under these really harsh conditions,” said Sandbichler.
He added that tyre development remains a continuous process as they keep on refining products for future rallies.
“I cannot say that we will have a new tyre here for Kenya. But I can tell you for sure that we never stop our development work. We never stop,” he said.