Bumper entries for 2019 East Africa Safari Classic Rally

DT Dobie Managing Director Ian Middleton (right), and General Sales Manager for Volkswagen Usha Nagpal (second, right) present a Volkswagen Amarok double cab car that will be used as the route opener for East African Safari Classic Rally to Clerk of Course Raju Chagger (second, left) and the rally’s manager Pipi Renu (left).

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • Pryce will be navigated by Dale Furniss, who has knowledge of local conditions, having partnered Rajbir Rai in the Kenya National Rally Championship series at the height of the Rai’s rallying career.
  • He partnered Rai in the Safari and Kiambu rallies respectively.

The 2019 East African Safari Classic Rally has received one more foreign entry to add to the original 21 crews that had registered for the event last month.

The rally will take place from November 27 to December 6.

Twenty-seven-year-old Osian Pryce will be the youngest driver in the list of entrants, who will be tackling his first-ever rally on the African soil outside his Wales home.

Pryce, who has done well in the European circuit, will be part of the list of three foreign drivers who will be taking part in the Safaricom-sponsored East African Safari Classic Rally.

He will drive a Ford Escort, while his team-mate Joey Ghose from Oman will driver a Nissan 240Rs car while the third foreign driver, Scott Armstrong of Great Britain, will drive a Datsun 160J.

Pryce will be navigated by Dale Furniss, who has knowledge of local conditions, having partnered Rajbir Rai in the Kenya National Rally Championship series at the height of the Rai’s rallying career.

He partnered Rai in the Safari and Kiambu rallies respectively.

Apart from Safaricom, other sponsors of the competition include Bidco Africa, Vivo Energy Kenya through its Shell V-Power and Aviation Gas (Avgas) brands will be the official fuel sponsor of the 2019 East Africa Classic Rally.

Ghose, who left Kenya in 1994 to settle in Oman, was a well-known rally driver and a navigator at the height of his rallying career in the Kenya National Rally Championship series.

Ghose will be driving a Nissan 240RS in the Safari Classic Rally. He acquired the car from New Zealand. Grant Shand of RallyXtreme UK built the car to the proper specification Safari Classic Rally.

Pryce has made history by winning the first closed road stage rally in Wales, after scoring a sensational victory on the Get Connected Rali Bae Ceredigion.

Having not contested a rally in a fully-homologated R5 car for two years, and coming just six weeks after breaking his collarbone in a mountain ‘biking accident, the talented 26-year old Machynlleth-born star had said before the start that the odds on him winning where stacked against him.