News from: The Tempest Rally The final round of the Kenyan National Rally Championship The Mombasa Rally And the East African Safari Classic And so much more!
Geoff’s gossip OK, enough worrying people, we’re back from our adventure to sunnier climes, survived the savagery of Africa, topped up our tans and managed to pick up a couple of bugs to ensure neither Zoe or I are on top form upon our return to the U.K! As you are all no doubt aware Geoff Mayes Media moved to Africa for the month of November to cover both the final round of the Kenyan National Rally Championship and the East African Safari Classic Rally. Now in the past I have successfully managed my foreign clients from afar and was fairly confident the same could be done with my British clients for 5 weeks – but thanks to the joys of modern technology it wasn’t all smooth sailing but we got the job done! First I must say massive congratulations to Jason Pritchard for his first outright rally win on the Tempest 2 wheel drive Rally! Hopefully the first of many, but after the recent ‘sponsors day’ at Sweet Lamb we still have plenty to do to raise the budget for Jas to make the next step in 2010… but watch this space! Also in this newsletter is an exclusive interview with Surinder Thatti – one of the newly appointed vice presidents for the FIA. Surinder will know his exact position within the new government in the next few weeks but we wish him all the best in what is sure to be a challenging role! The main feature this month is the Classic Safari and I hope you all enjoy reading our various articles and appreciate just what it takes to complete this incredible event. Both Ian Duncan and Bjorn Waldegaard have an enormous amount of experience of contesting marathon events, so for Steve Perez to finish third to these two rallying legends is a remarkable achievement and I hope to see his return in 2011. We also spent some time catching up with Peter Horsey, the winner of the African selection for the Pirelli Star Drive but I’ll bring you that interview next time out. So for now, sit back and relax….
Oh, and have a VERY Merry Christmas!
Tempest Two Wheel Drive Rally 2009 Aldershot, England
Pritchard takes Tempest victory Builth Wells based MSA British Rally Elite member Jason Pritchard took a stunning victory on last weekends South of England Tempest Two wheel drive Rally, the first outright win of his young but impressive career. With Robbie Durrant calling the notes for the first time and with the pair having to adapt to using organisers notes again they adopted a cautious start. At first service Pritchard adjusted the suspension settings on his Competition Car Insurance, FCS Laser Mail and North Road Garage supported Citroen C2R2 Max. The changes to the handling of the little car worked wonders and the double British Rally R2 Champion promptly won the next test! With the pairing consistently at the head of the pack they returned to Aldershot with a comfortable winning margin of 21 seconds. The stages were real tricky in the morning. Although it was dry there was standing water on some corners just waiting to catch the unwary out. The car was perfect once we’d made the changes and those times were a bit of a surprise as we were just out for a bit of fun and didn’t even put any new tyres on the car all day! Jason is currently evaluating his options for 2010 and an announcement is expected to be made before the end of the year. For more information please visit www.jasonpritchard.co.uk
S&L KCB Mombasa Rally 2009 Round 8 Kenyan National Rally Championship Although Carl ‘Flash’ Tundo may have wrapped up the title at the previous round all of the top protagonists were in Mombasa to contest the final round of the 2009 Kenyan National Championship. Three stages, each run three times, would test the assortment of entries, including an 18 kilometre test through the stunning Vipingo Ridge Golf Course, offering the perfect corporate spectator stage! Lee Rose took the victory in his Mitsubishi Evo 9, with Flash a further 41 seconds further back. Third overall was Bladev Chager in his Subaru N12b although such was the pace of this rally that he was some five minutes off the lead! Horsey and Matovu impress on Mombasa Rally Newly crowned African Pirelli Star Driver Peter Horsey and his experienced co-driver Moses Matovu survived the tough and gruelling S&L KCB Mombasa Rally to end the nine stage event in a very impressive fourth overall. After a cautious start Peter gradually upped his pace and by the end of the first loop of three stages Horsey and Matovu were inside the top six and on a mission. A puncture on the fourth special stage cost them a bit of time, as did a broken damper later in the day, but the pair survived both the conditions and the sweltering heat to return to Vipingo Ridge fourth overall and top juniors! Peter; I was a bit rusty in the morning but once I had shaken the cobwebs off I was happy with my driving. We had a good set of notes and overall I’m pleased with how our day went. Moses; Everytime I sit with Peter we have a good run, and this weekend was no exception. We are both really looking forward to 2010 now.
Mitchell’s strong run short circuited by electrical failure. Limuru based Quentin Mitchell was left frustrated after an electrical gremlin halted his charge on the recent KCB Mombasa Rally when the 23 year old was fighting for top junior honours in the final round of the Kenya National Rally Championship. Mitchell and co driver Tim Challen were quick out of the blocks on the opening test with their time through the 28 kilometre test putting the opera singer into sixth position overall in his ageing Mitsubishi Evo 8! Another strong run in the second stage helped the young pairing consolidate their position but then disaster struck on the Vipingo Ridge test. Five minutes were lost when the coil pack failed. With the problem quickly diagnosed Mitchell was able to change the coil and continue out of the stage and into service. The next three tests were a repeat of the morning loop and once again the opening stage proved favourable to Quentin. Improving on his morning run by six seconds gave the young talent a moral boost but then the car began to loose power towards the end of stage five and ultimately came to a halt in the sixth test, the electrics crying enough as a result of the coil pack failure! Of course I am disappointed that we failed to finish but I am very positive about how the morning went. Our times once again showed that we are on the pace, especially considering our out dated equipment, and I am pleased with how my pace notes worked. Once again Tim was brilliant on the notes and it reminds me once again that this is very much a team game and we worked well together. At the moment Quentin is busy working on his new Christmas CD but is looking at options for the new season. An announcement will be made in the New Year regarding his plans so stay tuned! For more information on Quentin please visit www.quentinmitchellrallying.com
5 minutes with Surinder Thatti (FIA Vice President) Background; Surinder is one of those who has ‘been there and gotten the T-shirt’ as a competitor and as such his progression from competitor to official was an obvious route. The Kenyan born rallying enthusiast has an impressive motorsport C.V, winning the African Rally Championship alongside Zambian Satwant Singh 4 times, as well as recording finishes on the gruelling Safari Rally no less than six times between 1986 and 1999! When he retired from active competition Surinder became involved as both an organiser and an FIA Observer and was heavily involved in setting up the East African Classic Safari Rally – a marathon ten day event around Kenya and Tanzania purely for historic specification rally cars. In recent years his involvement with the FIA has grown and Surinder was one of the stewards at the Belgian F1 Grand Prix when Lewis Hamilton cut the chicane to move ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, before being handed a drive through penalty that very nearly cost him the world title! With Jean Todt winning the recent FIA Presidential Elections Surinder was one of seven people offered the roles of vice president and although the exact details of his role are not clear yet he is under no illusions that his position could be beneficial to African Motorsport. How has your role regarding African Motorsport changed? I am still in charge of CAMSA (Confederation of African Motorsport Association) but apart from that my involvement in the affairs of African Motorsport will remain unchanged. I am not a regional vice president and am currently waiting for a decision on what my “specific role” will be. What improvements are anticipated for the African Rally Championship in 2010? We are aiming to improve the safety aspect of rallying, beginning with real time tracking of the cars in stage and how we react to any incidents. We also need to come up with ways of drawing in new blood to the sport, both as competitors and as officials. Do you see Africa gaining a WRC event any time soon? The new ISC rules regarding stage distances and remote servicing would allow the Safari to return but they require closed roads for special stages and an annual licence fee of €170 000. Both of these are pretty much impossible for Kenya at the present moment. As well as his new role as an FIA Vice President, overseeing CAMSA and Rally Manager for the East African Classic Safari Rally Surinder Thatti is also busy putting the final touches to his latest venture, the 2010 International Rally of Morocco, scheduled to take place from 9 to 16 October next year, and running to the same rules and principles as the Classic Safari – here is one busy man!
The Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic
a true to the spirit classic rally that covered more competitive distance in ten days than the FIA World Rally Championship contested in the whole 2009 rally season! The rally in numbers makes for some interesting reading – 4500 kilometres across two countries, of which over 3000km were competitive, but on open roads, just to add an extra dimension to the event! The entry fee - £17 000 suddenly makes the MSA British Rally Championship look cheap… but then this includes car freight, two free flights from Europe and 12 nights accommodation at some seriously luxurious lodges around East Africa! The rally was incredibly well supported, with entries from around the world and some incredible machines appearing on the African roads – as well as the Escort Mk 1’s, various Datsuns and Porsche 911’s there were a pair of Renault Alpines, a Citroen DS21 and a mighty Mustang on the entry list. The Renaults struggled, the Citroen had a couple of teething issues and the Mustang was hampered by having to run first on the road for the entire rally by virtue of being the quickest car out there! The Francis Tuthill Team not only had the most cars on the rally with five entries but also ran the slickest operation and with four cars finishing inside the top ten overall! The team had every right to be frustrated to not win this event once again. Their lead driver, Gerard Marcy, began the rally by winning the opening stage by 17 seconds! The experienced Belgium was still in a prime position when he ran into troubles on Day 3. After dropping 8 minutes on the opening stage of the day Gerard and co-driver Stephane Prevot stormed off into the next test at a blistering pace before doing serious damage to his electrical system and lost another 48 minutes!!! This incredible time loss dropped the Porsche crew way down the leaderboard and the fact that they fought back to finish fourth overall is pretty amazing!
The winner was former Safari Rally winner (in 1994 with Toyota) and local rallying hero Ian Duncan in the enormous Ford Mustang, a car well suited to the rough and high speed stages but struggled on the tight and twisty sections – winning one stage by three and a half minutes and then loosing over two minutes on the tight mountain sections – so his win was a very tactical one! And his nearest rival, once Marcy was out of the equation, was another former winner of the Safari Rally, Mr Bjorn Waldegaard, in another Porsche, co-driven by the owner of the car, Igbal Sagoo. Waldegaard was always there, close behind, waiting and ready to pounce. Half way through the rally the gap was a mere 22 seconds!!! (To put this into perspective Steve Perez, who was third, was already half an hour further back!)
Of the 44 cars that took to the ceremonial start in Mombasa 37 were classified as finishers ten days later but the Classic Safari does allow crews to skip up to a maximum of three days during the rally. Out of those who failed to make the finish Wayne Kieswetter ended his rally in dramatic style when he barrel rolled his Datsun 180B on the third day. His team mate Roddy Sachs had a similar adventure but, after scavenging parts from Kieswetter’s destroyed Datsun Sachs continued in his decidedly bent looking 180B, finishing the event 31st overall, a mere nine hours behind the class winner, Geoff Bell!
Ti Motorsports had returned to Africa with high hopes after replacing their Peugeot 504 Coupe with a Ford Escort Mk 1 1600cc and commissioned experienced codriver Denis Giraudet to call the notes for ‘Gogi’ Singh Sira. After three days the pair were up to second in. But then electrical issues cost the team two days worth of action, eventually seeing the hard working minnows finishing thirtieth overall, but still doing enough to take the final class podium position! And what of the gorgeous but somewhat inappropriate Renault Alpines? Both were classified as finishers and it was a joy to see them out in the rugged African bush! When I spoke to team principal Erik Comas at the start he commented on the fact that he had not competed in Africa since racing in Formula One at the 1977 Grand Prix in South Africa! His total stage time for the 2009 Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic was 50 hours, 23 minutes and 4 seconds! Results Ian Duncan/ Amaar Slatch Bjorn Waldegaard/ Igbal Sagoo Steve Perez/ Staffan Paramander Gerard Marcy/ Stephane Prevot Thomas Flohr/ Didier Breton
Ford Mustang Porsche 911 Datsun 260 Z Porsche 911 Porsche 911
18 hours 09 min 02 sec 18 hours 18 min 54 sec 19 hours 19 min 09 sec 19 hours 44 min 35 sec 20 hours 34 min 51 sec
Kenya – my story People always think that my life is pretty cushy – travelling the world, photographing rallies in exotic locations and then writing about them in the luxury of my own home… well that is mainly true but I do have my stressful times as well, and this years ‘adventure’ to Africa was full of unnecessary stress! Illness Early in our trip, during the first visit to Mombasa Zoe had had to deal with me coming down with awful food poisoning! Both Ian Freestone and I had had prawns and salad – and we both, well I will spare you the graphic details, but we were not well! Zoe, who is Kenyan born and lived there pretty much her whole live, proudly told me that she had never had malaria – talk about stirring up the devil! 14 days after we landed (the minimum time for incubation) she came down with a fever and all her joints ached – the poor girl had malaria, and in a bad way! A quick trip to hospital and all was confirmed – but the recovery process would take at least another two weeks and thus poor Zoe had to skip most of the Safari Rally! Logistics With the Safari entailing us driving 4000 kilometres in 10 days vehicles are rather important. And with father also out helping on the Safari I needed two vehicles. All my great planning from the U.K sorting cars out had suddenly gone tits up – the person and their promised car set aside for Papa Mayes decided, at the last minute, that they couldn’t help. Added to this the exorbitant bill for servicing Zoe’s little Subaru and I was thinking of hiring a camel for the stay instead! To be fair her mechanic did a good job as the car, for the most part, rain faultlessly throughout the trip! With Zoe incapacitated, dad needing a lift and me now sans co-driver the problems were solved and Papa Mayes would now travel with me – we stocked up on vodka to keep him calm as he is not a big fan of my driving! The car, a 1994 Subaru Leone, despite external appearances, was mainly brilliant! The only issue was when she died for no reason on a nice smooth piece of road en-route to the end of day service in Tanzania at the end of Day 3. The Tuthill Team leapt on the car and, despite not finding a fault, the car burst back into life! The next day was our most challenging day yet – a horrendous road took us to the first stage of the day, passing stricken 4x4’s on the way. After fording a river we then drove up the Mbulu Hills where we photographed the stage. With torrential rains now turning the mountains into rivers we drove back down the way we had come, rescuing a stricken rally car
from a ditch before re-crossing the same river, now a good two feet deeper, and then towing a second rally car towards the end of the stage. Once more Kadogo (little in Swahili) let us down by dying unexpectedly. The occupants of the broken car, Gogi Sira and Denis Giraudet, helped us trace the issue to a faulty wire on the electric fuel pump and once more we were mobile! The Subaru was then brilliant throughout the duration of the rally, even when I attacked an unseen jump in 4th gear – the only indication that something was amiss was the sight of the local Masai scattering in all directions! The car survived and I went on to take my best jump shots of the entire rally at that point! 21st Century Technology A deal had been struck with Steve Perez to supply his media agency with daily photos, a challenge I eagerly accepted as my newly purchased ‘Internet Dongle’ promised me ‘broadband speed internet anywhere in East Africa’! Everything went fine until we entered Tanzania, whereupon I discovered that the stupid device only worked on Kenyan phone networks, meaning we had to ensure we were back at the Rally HQ every evening to use their Wifi to send photos out in time to meet the deadline! I had hoped the problem would disappear once back in Kenya but then my laptop, specifically purchased to withstand the rigours of Africa, suffered total hard drive failure on our first day back in Kenya! This meant that I had to pay a local computer fundi (wizard) an exorbitant amount to recover my documents and then had to borrow my fathers laptop for the rest of the rally to email out photos and press releases – but with the phone network at full capacity it would sometimes take us two hours to log into my yahoo account, upload ONE photo and send it off! The joys As those who know me will agree, I take a personal pride in my clients and friends successes so the end of the Safari was a very happy time for me… seeing Steve and Staffan finish third overall was awesome, as was the fact that Richard Tuthills hard work was rewarded with all five Porsches returning to Mombasa. Gogi Singh Sira and Ti Motorsports survived a battering with a local Matatu bus to record a class podium - these and many more little stories make a rally such as the Classic Safari an amazing experience! Oh… and Zoe wants us to compete in this marathon in 2011 (this can be our honeymoon!!!) so anyone wanting to sponsor us… just drop me an email please ☺
Christmas ideas It’s that time of the year already and Geoff Mayes Media have a selection of ideas – be it a thank you to sponsors, a memento to a long suffering co-driver or a thank you to the team our range of gifts should do the trick! Collages Any size, any number of photos and in any layout you like – click on the image to view a larger version.
Calendars We can offer a selection of calendars, ranging from desk calendars showing the week ahead to A3 wall calendars, ideal for marking those important rally dates. These calendars are brilliant as you can have a different photo of yourself in action for each month!
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Standing size : 24cm x 10.5cm x 14cm Month-to-view layout 26 pages Available with a white or black background £20 each or discount for multiple orders
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Folded size 28cm x 21.8cm (approx A4) Open size 28cm x 43.6cm (approx A3) Month-to-view layout 1 or more photos for every month of the year Available with a white or black background £25 each or discount for multiple orders
Geoff Mayes Media will be at the Autosport Show in January but feel free to contact us about our services for 2010 – we’re just a phone call or email away! Until then… Merry Christmas and a rally Happy New Year!