Carl Tundo and Tim Jessop took charge of Tanzania rally with an impressive performance leading from the start to the end to claim victory on their maiden race in the country.
In the VW Polo R5, the Kenyan crew showed early intention; taking a 2 minutes 15 seconds lead over compariot Karan Patel at the end of day one.
Tundo would maintain his lead on the final day to clinch victory.
“It is fantastic to win outside Kenya, I have never done this before.
“We are always in a race to win. It’s always good to have a consistent and clean rally and that is how we drove towards the target,” said Tundo.
Tundo and Jessop also secured maximum points to take the lead of the Africa rally championship with 60 points.
“We just hope we could do the rest of the event but it will all depend on the sponsors. Our target was definitely to do Uganda rally unfortunately it’s cancelled.
“For now we take on event by event and just wait and see what is next for us,” he added.
Karan Patel and Tauseef Khan hang onto second position from day one to also sum up an impressive drive.
“We are happy and contented with our position. We were looking for the first but Tundo drove very well, he was the best man.
“But the event was good for us,” said Patel.
Uganda’s Yasin Nasser and Ali Katumba were equally buoyant after securing the first podium finish in Rally Tanzania and their best finish after a series of disappointing events.
South Africa’s Guy Botterill and Simon Vacy Lyle encountered mechanical mishaps in stage five dropping them out of the podium places.
They would finish fourth overall dropping to second position on ARC leaderboard; 11 points behind Tundo.
Rising star Jeremy Wahome sealed the top five positions.
18 crews completed in the event. Gurpal Sandhu was the best places Tanzanian in seventh place.
The next ARC round heads to Zambia on 24-26 September.