Ralph Stead to head Kenya Rally stewards

Safari Rally of Kenya.
The KCB Safari Rally of Kenya is the fourth leg of this year’s eight-legged FIA African Rally Championship series whose first three legs were held in Zimbabwe in March, South Africa in April and Zambia last month.
The event, to be staged during the weekend of June 17-19 in and around Nairobi, is billed as one of the toughest motor rallying events in the world and it usually attracts some of the top drivers from Africa and overseas. And the world’s motorsport governing body, FIA, recently appointed Zimbabwe’s Stead as the chairman of stewards for this event.
Temba Mazvimbakupa, a top official of the Zimbabwe Motosport Federation, confirmed Stead’s appointment yesterday.
As the chairman of stewards for this year’s KCB Safari Rally of Kenya, Stead’s main task will be to head a three-man team of stewards who will be overseeing the running of this three-day event.
The stewards will, among other things, handle queries, complaints and protests, if there are any, from the competitors during and after the event.
They will also observe whether the event is being run according to the rules and regulations of international motor rallying.
In fact, the stewards will be acting like the
In Nairobi, Stead will be joined by fellow Zimbabweans Conrad Rautenbach and Jamie Whyte who will be competing in this event.
In Nairobi, Rautenbach will once again have Frenchman Nicolas Klinger as his navigator and they will be in their Green Fuel Ford Fiesta S2000 which has helped them to win the first three rounds of the 2011 FIA ARC series in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia in the past three months.
Before competing in Nairobi, Rautenbach and Klinger will take part in this weekend’s Toyota Gauteng Rally in South Africa. The event is the fourth round of the eight-round 2011 South African Rally Championship series in which Rautenbach is also representing Zimbabwe.
And Mazvimbakupa said yesterday that Rautenbach has indicated that he is going to airlift his Ford Fiesta from Johannesburg to Nairobi after this weekend’s Toyota Gauteng Rally.
“Conrad is going to airlift his Ford Fiesta S2000 to Nairobi for the KCB Safari Rally of Kenya after competing in the Toyota Gauteng Rally in South Africa this coming weekend.
“He had initially indicated that they were going to hire another car in South Africa and transport it by road to Nairobi, which they felt was cheaper than air lifting a car from Johannesburg to Nairobi.
“But he later said that the car they intended to hire from some guy in South Africa was going to cost much more than the air lifting option,” Mazvimbakupa said.