Toyota's Evans dislodges Tanak from Safari lead after day two

Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Elfyn Evans dislodged Ott Tanak of Hyundia from the summit of the WRC Safari Rally after a clean consistent run in Friday's eight stages.

It was an almost spotless performance from the Tanak winning the 32.20km long Camp Moran 2.1 seconds ahead of teammate Thierry Neuville and 8.6 seconds ahead of Toyota’s closest challenger Elfyn Evans.

The Estonian was cruising in the opening stages of the day as he put in a spotless performance to win Camp Moran, Loldia and Kedong stages with Toyota’s Kalle Rovanpera taking the win in the Geothermal 1 stage.

“We had clean stages especially the second one I would say but let’s say all of them are quite rough as expected but for us we had a smooth morning.”

However, trouble hit in the second run of the geothermal stage in the afternoon loop after having a driveline issue which cost him 1 minute 8.1 seconds from the stage winner Kalle Rovanpera.

The afternoon also was okay, the first two stages were good but at the end of the second one we realized we had a driveline issue and basically in the last two stages we had to drive in two wheel drive so we dropped quite a lot of time by doing that but at least we are here and we managed to bring it through.”

Evans, who topped the standings after the end of Kedong 2, will be hoping for another drama- free day tomorrow as Toyota claws back to exert the sort of dominance that has seen them win every edition of the Safari Rally since it made its return to the World Rally Championship calendar.

However it won’t be a walk in the park as he has his teammate and last year’s Safari rally winner Kalle ROvanpera in his tail.

“I was quite careful with the car when it was very rough but still very hard on the car but obviously it's been a gruelling day out there and I'm happy to get through it and it’s a long way to go in this rally,” remarked Evans after ending the day top.

It was a day to forget for the defending rally champion Thierry Neuville who ended the day over two minutes behind Evans as well as for Takamoto Katsuta who struggled with mechanical issues all day.

Five-time Safari rally champion Carl Tundo topped the charts for Kenyan drivers as he closed out the day sixteenth ahead of Jeremy Wahome and Singh Vohra who finished day two nineteenth and 22nd respectively.

In the national class, Minesh Rathod is leading the race over ten minutes ahead of Evans Kavisi Nzioka.

On Saturday, drivers will head to the daunting 26.88km long sleeping warrior, Elementaita and Soysambu stages with a repeat of the same stages scheduled for the afternoon session.