As it stands, following the latest raft of pandemic-induced cancellations, the next round of the World Rally Championship is scheduled to take place on 16-19 July, in the height of summer. And it will be a momentous occasion because, for the first time since 2002, when Colin McRae took his last WRC victory, the Safari Rally is back.
The African classic was always one of the emblematic events on the calendar, renowned as the toughest challenge of them all.
That was not only down to the nature of the terrain, with impossibly broken-up roads punctuated by rocks, craters and mudholes, but also the length of the stages, or ‘competitive sections’, as they were known.
These were hundreds of miles long, on open public roads, where drivers had to contend with…