When Rio Smith entered last year’s World Rally Championship Safari Rally aged 19, there was no indication that he would mature fast despite racing while still in school.
He is a man in haste as demonstrated in last weekend’s African Rally Championship Pearl of Africa Rally in Uganda where he won by far in an old Subaru Impreza GVB.
He is expected to compete in this year’s WRC Safari Rally on June 22-25 aged 20. It will be interesting.
Organisers of the WRC Safari Rally are racing against time to deliver a world-class event. Clerk of the Course Gurvi Bhabra said the organisers want to meet set deadlines and liaise with teams and international bodies connected to the Safari.
This ranges from paperwork to hardware, with the top agenda being the procurement of tyres and competition fuel. Modern rally cars are engineered to fuse with a clean environment.
For this reason, the Rally One Hybrid cars will be propelled by a special new 100 percent sustainable fuel developed and supplied by P1 Fuels of German at a cost of Sh857 per litre.
The teams have ordered 13,000 litres of this fuel for the WRC Safari Rally which is expected in the country soon in a consignment which is also bringing in Pirelli racing tyres.
The 500BHp plus car in proper racing trim is a very thirsty machine which consumes one litre of this fuel for only 700 metres.
The fossil-free climate-neutral petrol blends synthetic and biodegradable elements, making it 100 per cent sustainable and usable in everyday road vehicles also.
FIA World Rally Championship partner P1 Performance Fuels has begun supplying German governmental armoured vehicles and other official government cars with the same high-performance fossil-free fuels which had a successful debut in the WRC in the 2022 season.
The availability of P1’s fossil-free fuel demonstrates the transitional process of research and development performed in the highly demanding WRC test bed, paving the way for consumer usage in everyday vehicles, said the Federation Internationale De I’ Automobile (FIA) in a statement in its website.
The special fuel will also be sold to drivers in Rally 2 and 3 categories but competitors in ordinary rally cars like the Mitsubishi EVO 10 entered in the national championship category will use Aviation Gas whose spike in demand has been addressed.
The aim of selecting a sustainable fuel provider is to enable the FIA and the WRC Promoter to supplement the introduction of hybrid technology for Rally1 with a fuel that uses sustainable source materials to ensure a marked reduction in net CO2 emissions, but has the same performance characteristics and the closest possible price point to the current fuel, according to the FIA. BY DAILY NATION