Jeremiah Wahome bagged his second career Kenya National Rally Championship (KNRC) victory following brilliant displays in the iconic Mombasa Motor Club round.
Driving a Ford Fiesta Rally 2 contraption and navigated by home driver Victor Okundi, the 24-year-old Wahome sped to his second win of the season in a time of 02:12:12.
The coast tour was incidentally a repeat of the season-opening Machakos Rally, where young Wahome cleared the ground with all his stage adversaries.
In Mombasa, Wahome, who has previously represented Kenya in the FIA African Rally Championship as well as Safari’s WRC3 category, beat Chana by a 1 minute 19 seconds margin to move to the second position on the KNRC log.
Samman Vohra, driving a Skoda Fabia Rally 3 machine, won the Clubman category at a blistering pace after failing to finish Day One on Saturday.
But Vohra won every single stage on Day Two including a joint lead with Wahome in Sunday’s 41.17km SS3 speed test.
Wahome’s win was nevertheless overshadowed by Chana, who extended his massive lead on the log after the dust settled on the season’s only sea-level event.
It was an absolutely blissful sea-level experience for the winning pair as Wahome’s navigator Victor Okundi celebrated his maiden career home win.
“Words alone can’t explain the excitement of my first national home win and second career KNRC win. And that they’ve both come in the same season makes this my best season ever,” he noted.
Okundi continued: “Rallying being rallying, of course, we had our own set of amazing challenges, the worst of them all being the loss of the intercom before the start of CS4.
"So, Jeremiah's ability to memorize all his notes came in quite handy as we couldn’t hear each other at all for the whole 44 km."
"I can’t thank our sponsors Safaricom and Kenya Airways enough for the opportunity.”
The result in North Coast’s Vipingo also went down as Wahome’s second podium of the season after finishing third in Eldoret.
Wahome has two retirements so far in the 9-leg season—coming at the WRC Safari and ARC Equator Rally.
Former three-time Open Class motocross champion Anthony Nielsen navigated by Nairobi’s Riyaz Ismail in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X completed the podium dash in a time of 02:14:18.
Jasmeet was all smiles. “Yes, we enjoyed the MMC rally night stage with the third fastest time, and this morning, we were fighting with Nielsen for second and we pushed harder in the second loop and were able to pass him. Second overall has given us a push even further in the championship. The car has been running flawlessly and I thank my team for an awesome job.”
