Bengi excited to be Eldoret Rally road sweeper

The official reconnaissance of the Kabras Eldoret Rally route and scrutineering of the competing cars will be done Friday morning ahead of the race on Saturday.

Cars will be flagged off from Eldoret Town Hall at 8am.

Eric Bengi will be the surprise leader of the pack as he is seeded first in his Subaru Impreza ahead of the rest of the big names in this round of the Kenya National Rally Championship (KNRC).

Bengi sounded confident when talking to Nation Sport about his historic position just years since making his rallying debut as a student of the Abdul Sidi Rally Academy.

''We have no problem starting first on road. It’s an honour to sweep and a great chance to prepare for things to come. It’s however unusual for a Division One Category driver to sweep the road. We definitely do not want to succumb to the pressure behind us and do anything stupid,'' said Bengi, a lawyer by profession.

Bengi is among the 22 crews who have entered the penultimate round of the 2018 KNRC series. The weather conditions may prove to be unpredictable as rains have lashed certain sections of the route.

''We actually don’t mind it if it’s wet. Wet conditions have a way of levelliing the competition to skill and care and not about power and raw speed,” added Bengi.

The Kabras Eldoret Rally is set for a spectator friendly event with six competitive stages along the route of the competition.

The rally 250-kilometre-long rally will start from the Sikh Union Club at 8am on Saturday 13th October before tackling first of the competitive sections.

The longest competitive stage will be 34km while the shortest stage will be 5.5km

A total of three stages will be covered twice.

The stages will be as follows with the start time: 09:31: CS2-Farm 1 (31.00km), 09:30: CS3: Forest 1 (34.80km), 12.28: CS4-Chemweno 2 (5.5km), 12.41: CS5: Farm 2 (31km), 13:24 and CS6-Forest 2 (34.80Km) respectively.

The Seeded List:

1. Eric Bengi/Tuta Mionki (Subaru Impreza)

2. Baldev Chager/Ravi Soni (Mitsubishi Evolution)

3. Carl Tundo/Tim Jessop (Mitsubishi Evolution10)

4. Onkar Rai/Gavin Laurence (Skoda Fabia)

5. Ian Duncan/Anthony Nielsen (Nissan Pickup)

6. Farhaaz Khan/Kashif Sheikh (Mitsubishi Evolution)

7. Tejveer Rai/Zahir Shah (Mitsubishi Evolution10)

8. Jasmeet Chana/Ravi Chana (Mitsubishi Evolution10)

9. Amaanraj Rai/Tauseef Khan (Ford Fiesta)

10. Ammar Haq/Victor Okundi (Mitsubishi Evolution10)

11. Hassan Alwi/Leroy Olinga (Subaru Impreza)

12. Sohanjeet Puee/Adnan Din (Subaru Impreza)

13. Aakif Virani/Azhar Bhatti (Subaru Impreza)

14. Adin Haq/Raju Chaggar (Range Rover)

15. Nikhil Sachania/Alfir Khan (Mitsubishi Evolution10)

16. John Ng'ang'a/George Njoroge (Subaru Impreza)

17. Rajay Sehmi/Tej Sehmi (Porsche 911)

18. Chandrakant Chhabhadia/Julius Mwachuya (S.Impreza)

19. Edward Maina/John Ngugi (Subaru Impreza)

20. Khalid Umar/Kimeli Korir (Subaru Impreza)

21. Sarit Shah/Kigondu Kareithi (Toyota Corolla)

22. Albert Kigen/Tony Gichohi (VW Golf)