Long wait over as 28 cars prepare for KCB Machakos Rally

The formalities of the past few days are now complete and all systems go as KCB Machakos Rally returns to Lisa Farm Sunday.

The event will be organised by Kenya Motor Sports Club (KMSC) and will count towards the fifth round of the KCB Kenya National Rally Championship (KNRC).

The weekend program started off on Saturday morning with pre-event scrutineering and reconnaissance.

Scrutineering took place at Kenya Motor Sports Club (KMSC) Clubhouse in Nairobi’s South C area where a total of 28 cars were cleared to take part in the event.

While team managers presented their rally cars for pre-event scrutineering at the Clubhouse, rally drivers and their navigators spent the better part of the day in the scheduled route familiarisation better known in the technical jargon as reconnaissance (recce).

Reconnaissance schedule took place between 0600 Hrs and 1700 Hrs.

Clerk of the Course, John Kamau announced that the rally will run entirely on private land away from the hustle and bustle of motor and human traffic.

Kamau also noted that spectators are being locked out of the race location in line with the MOH COVID-19 protocols which prohibit social gathering.

“We are running this event without any spectators and this is in line with the Ministry of Health COVID-19 guidelines. There will be a COVID-19 officer at Lisa to ensure that all the MOH Protocols are adhered to. Only the teams, officials, media, and sponsors will be allowed on rally location. As Kenya Motor Sports Club we try to organize technical stages and a very compact itinerary. There will be no overnight perc ferme on this event but rally cars will be required to check in at the Lisa Farm perc ferme by 7am tomorrow.”

The cars will be flagged off at 830am and will go straight into the start at 9:00am. We are running two stages that will be repeated, so we should be done with the event by 3pm,” Kamau explained.

Kamau added that the competitive stages for the event will be run on gravel with the designated compact transport road sections featuring tarmac, broken tarmac and gravel.

Kamau further said that the Competitive Distance will be 146.00 km, the liaison distance 60.00 km with both totalling to 206.00 km.

There will be two stages to be repeated. The longest stage will be a grueling 57.00Km run at Lisa while the shortest will be a 16.0Km stretch.

The fifth round of the national series will also count towards Group N, Division One for Drivers and Division Two, Division Three, Classic Car, Supplementary Class (S), Two Wheel Drive Class (2WD) , Specially Prepared Vehicles Class (SPV) and the Kenya National Rally T4 Cross Country Cars(SSV/UTV).