Sébastien Ogier held off teammate Kalle Rovanperä’s surge to lead Toyota Gazoo Racing to a 1-2-3-4 result on the last day of Safari Rally Kenya.
Ogier won his third race in five appearances this season, but his rally nearly ended in the second special stage when a spot of Kenya’s infamous fesh-fesh sand threw his GR Yaris vehicle wide on a right-hand corner.
In an attempt to make up time lost to Rovanperä in the rough beginning, the Frenchman clipped a tree and pulled off his car’s whole rear tailgate. After winning the stage and regaining all of his time, he mended the gap in Hell’s Gate 1 with a bin liner to keep dust at bay.
More permanent repairs in service did not extinguish the drama, however, as all four Yaris crews completed the penultimate blast with dust-induced overheating engines.
Ogier, one of the hardest hit, saw his lead whittled down to just 9.2sec before the Wolf Power Stage finale, where the eight-time world champion’s run was again far from clean, arriving at the flying finish with a cracked windscreen.
