Tanak takes early blood at WRC Rally Kenya 2025
21st March 2025Hyundai’s Ott Tanak is the early overnight rally leader at the World Rally Championship’s Safari Rally Kenya having overtaken the championship leader in stage two.
Feature image credit: Jaanus Ree / Red Bull Content Pool
The WRC returns once more with the third round of the championship following a dominant run from Toyota’s championship leader Elfyn Evans in Rally Sweden.
Evans took the first stage win of the weekend at the 4.76km Kasarani Super Special Stage, where the drivers duelled it out for the opening test. However, Tanak bit back on the more technical 8.27km Mzabibu 1 stage to take the rally lead.
It wasn’t without issue for Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux as his car was forced into retirement early on. His car refused to start after the regroup, meaning he missed out on running in the second stage.
However, Fourmaux has been confirmed to return to the rally on Friday’s action.
Who finished where?
As previously mentioned, Tanak stands as the rally leader with a time of 9m 52.3s. The Estonian leads ahead of Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta, who had a moment on SS2 and narrowly escaped a crash, by 2.4s and M-Sport Ford’s Gregoire Munster completed the top three.
Toyota’s two-time world champion, and Kenya winner, Kalle Rovanpera stood in fourth ahead of his championship-leading teammate Evans in fifth.
M-Sport’s Joshua McErlean led the bottom three WRC Rally1 runners, in sixth, as Toyota’s Sami Pajari and Hyundai’s defending world champion, Thierry Neuville, completed the classification in seventh and eighth.
This left Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Oliver Solberg to complete the top 10 for the WRC2 classification, in ninth and 10th respectively.
The final WRC1 Rally1 runner, Jourdan Serderidis completed the day down in 15th.
Read more WRC here:
- WRC drivers protest FIA Fourmaux fine in Rally Kenya
- Who is driving at WRC Safari Rally Kenya 2025?
- Evans ‘caught napping’ by Katsuta before Rally Sweden win
- Elfyn Evans holds off Takamoto Katsuta to win 2025 WRC Sweden
- Evans on cusp of Rally Sweden win with Katsuta just behind
- Evans leads penultimate day of WRC Rally Sweden 2025
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Hi, I’m Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion.
I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I’ve loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.
Kamron Kent
Hi, I'm Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion. I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I've loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.
