TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team will look to continue its flying start to the season when it heads for Africa to face the uniquely demanding Safari Rally Kenya, which stages round three of the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship on March 12-15.
So far this year, the team has locked out the podium places on the icy mountain roads of Rallye Monte-Carlo and snow-covered stages of Rally Sweden – managing a feat that had not been achieved on the first two rounds of a WRC season since 1984.
The only African round of the championship, Safari Rally Kenya will provide a stark contrast to the winter weather of the previous two events. Since returning to the WRC calendar in 2021 after almost two decades away, the Safari has reestablished itself as one of the toughest challenges in rallying. While some sections of stage are extremely rough and rocky, others consisting of soft sand can be just as difficult to navigate, and rain can turn the usually dry and dusty tracks into deep, slippery mud.
Teams make modifications to their cars especially for this demanding terrain, including the addition of snorkel systems to prevent engines being starved of air when crossing deep water or soft sand.
TGR-WRT has a proud history on the Safari having won all five editions held since 2021, extending Toyota’s record tally of victories to 13. Elfyn Evans conquered the event for the first time one year ago and again arrives in Africa as the championship leader following victory in Sweden. He has a lead of 13 points over team-mate Oliver Solberg, winner of Rallye Monte-Carlo.
Takamoto Katsuta is third in the standings after finishing second in Sweden and has a strong record in Kenya featuring three podium finishes, while nine-time world champion Sébastien Ogier returns to the line-up for his first Safari start since 2023, having previously won the event twice. Sami Pajari is entered under the TGR-WRT2 banner, fresh from his second career podium in Sweden and looking to build on a fourth-place finish on his Safari debut one year ago.
In WRC2, British driver Gus Greensmith makes his debut aboard a privately entered GR Yaris Rally2 car on an event where he has won the category in each of the past two years. Also driving GR Yaris Rally2 cars in Kenya are Paraguayan drivers Diego Domínguez and Andrea Lafarja. TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto will sit out the event to focus on recovering fully following a testing accident prior to Rally Sweden.
This year’s route is more compact, covering four days and 350.52 competitive kilometres, centred around the service park at Lake Naivasha, about a two-hour drive north-west of the capital city, Nairobi. After shakedown on Thursday morning, the rally starts in the afternoon with the Camp Moran and Mzabibu stages. Both stages are repeated to bookend Friday, which also features a trio of tests around Lake Naivasha run twice either side of mid-day service. Saturday takes crews north to Lake Elmenteita for a trio of repeated tests, while a pair of stages are run twice to form Sunday’s final leg with the second pass of Hell’s Gate serving as the rally-ending Power Stage.
Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“I always enjoy going back to Kenya. I have some incredible memories from driving there, and even though the rally is not as long as it used to be, it’s still the toughest one in terms of the terrain. Toyota has always built very strong cars and focused on preparing for these tough events – the main difference today is that it’s not possible to test in Africa for weeks beforehand like we used to in my day. We’ve had some amazing results to start the season, with all five of our crews finishing on the podium at least once, which shows that we have a really strong team. Of course, we would like to achieve a similar result in Kenya, but our main goal will be to try to win the rally again and to score as many points as we can.”
