At the end of the Shakedown session in Kenya, Kalle Rovanpera was the fastest driver on this early test of Safari Rally with Ott Tanak and Sebastien Ogier following him.
Kalle Rovanpera improved his Shakedown time on his second pass from this stage and tops the SD classification.
Ott Tanak follows the 2022 WRC Champion for five tenths of a second and his target is to win this event for the first time in his career.
Sebastien Ogier completes the top three and wants to turnaround his bad luck from Rally Italia Sardegna where he crashed out from the lead.
Thierry Neuville comes right behind the Frenchman for only two tenths of a second and was one of the three Rally1 drivers who passed four times from SD.
One tenth of a second separated Elfyn Evans from Neuville for the fourth best time in Shakedown, therefore the first one is in fifth place.
Takamoto Katsuta is sixth overall and his Safari Rally did not start in a positive way as he rolled his Yaris and his mechanics had to fix it in the remote service. The Japanese driver has two podium finishes in Kenya the last two years and is aiming to repeat this performance this weekend.
Dani Sordo, Pierre-Louis Loubet, Oliver Solberg and Jourdan Serderidis complete the top ten.
Loubet competes in Kenya for the first time in his career as well as Esapekka Lappi and the M-Sport driver did four passes from SD. Solberg will not score points for the championship this weekend as he wants to build his experience while Safari Rally is the penultimate event for Serderidis before his WRC retirement.
Esapekka Lappi had to pull over 2 Km into Shakedown during his first run as he faced mechanical issues with his i20N which means that he was not able to continue this session and to make some final changes to the set-up before the real action begins on Thursday.
Watch below the Shakedown times:
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