Kenya : IRC - FinishAndrea Navarra steered his Abarth-prepared Fiat Grande Punto S2000 running on BFGoodrich tyres to IRC honours on the opening round of the 2007 Intercontinental Rally Challenge.
The Italian won the IRC classification of the Safari Rally in Kenya
by a margin of six minutes over Japan's Hideaki Miyochi (Mitsubishi). The next round of the competition takes place in Turkey in May.
The new Intercontinental Rally Challenge kicked off this weekend with a visit to a legendary event, Kenya's Safari Rally, formerly the most punishing round of the World Rally Championship.
The format of this year's event featured in-depth changes compared with the Safari's glorious past, but the gravel tracks of the Nairobi region were as rough as ever and a severe test of cars and tyres alike.
The Fiat Abarth team and BFGoodrich's development staff had prepared carefully for the inaugural fixture of the 2007 series, including testing with the Grande Punto S2000 in the south of France. This programme included work on the new g-Force Gravel tyres developed especially for the Kenyan round and engineered to resist punctures. These tests were particularly encouraging but the true litmus test was always going to be the event itself.
The 2007 Safari Rally began with a super-special in front of a packed crowd in Nairobi city centre's Uhuru Park. This appetiser was won by the Japanese driver Hideaki Miyochi (Mitsubishi Lancer) but the serious business began in earnest on the Friday morning with a competitive loop some 120km north of Nairobi. The two BFGoodrich-equipped factory Fiat Grande Puntos soon emerged at the top of the provisional leaderboard, although Italy's Umberto Sandola was later sidelined near the end of the day's penultimate stage while lying second after his radiator got clogged up with sand and grass which caused his engine to overheat.
His team-mate Andrea Navarra concluded the first leg with a lead of seven minutes over Miyochi and ten minutes ahead of Sammy Aslam (Mitsubishi Lancer). On an event like the Safari Rally, however, it only takes a concealed rock, an exceptionally deep rut or a stray wild animal to whittle even the biggest of margins down to nothing in an instant.
Navarra found this out the hard way when his Fiat Grande Punto clouted a rock at the start of SS14, four stages from home, just when victory seemed to be in the bag.
The Italian covered a total of 22km with a rear flat tyre and in the end his gearbox gave up the ghost. In total, the incident cost him two minutes but the Abarth mechanics succeeded in changing the transmission to enable Navarra and his co-driver Guido d’Amore to go on win the Safari Rally's Intercontinental Rally Challenge classification.
"The new BFGoodrich g-Force Gravel developed specially for Safari Rally worked very well," said the Michelin Group's Competition Director, Frédéric Henry-Biabaud. "Navarra's puncture, which wasn't due to the tyre, was the only flat reported by the two BFGoodrich-equipped Fiat Grande Punto S2000s despite the Kenyan event's punishing reputation. This is a very positive result for us and very encouraging for BFGoodrich's new-generation rally tyres."
BFGoodrich
