Mehta wins Kenya rally

Press, 9 April 1980, Page 36

Mehta wins Kenya rally

NZPA-Reuter Nairobi Shekhar • Mehta, of Kenya, driving a Datsun, powered his way to his third win in the punishing five-day Kenya safari motor rally yesterday.

He led a near clean-sweep of the leading positions for the Japanese factory, which took first, second and fourth places. The rival Mercedes Benz team from West Germany was stricken in the closing stages with a series of broken .axles on the jugged, dusty course through the drought-hit Kenyan bush; Mercedes cars finished third, sixth and nineteenth.

Mehta, born in Uganda, i told after finishing under a blazing sun, how he. had feared the Mercedes challenge. “We expected them to be faster and we were surprised that we could keep up with them. We built up pressure from the start,” he said. Mehta led in the opening stages of the five-day contest, but was gradually overtaken by the powerful Mercedes team, headed by the world champion Bjorn Wai? degaard, of Sweden. Half-way . through the rallv the fleet of Mercedes 450SLC saloons, backed up

iby helicopters and a hugei maintenance crew, looked like pulling clear from the rest of the field as their power told on the fast, dusty, hard-baked tracks of the Kenyan bush. But a sudden rainstorm over Mount Kilimanjaro cost them the lead, with Waldegaard slithering deep into an embankment ? ■ ' , Thereafter the West German cars slipped slowly j down the list of leaders as) they were hit by ' three broken rear axles and other mechanical problems. Mehta, driving impeccably and suffering no major set-

I backs re-emerged in the ieao 1 and his Datsun team-mate, | Rauno Altonen, of Finland, I followed up closely to finish : the rally second. Third was the leading Mercedes, driven by a Nairobi garage owner, Vic Preston. Final positions were.—Shekharj Mehta. (Kenya), Datsun, 207, 1; Rauno' Altonen (Finland), Datsun, 242, 2; Vic Preston (Kenya), Mercedes. '307, 3; Mike Kirland (Kenya). Datsun, 345. 4; JeanPierre Nicholas (France). Opel, j 401. 5: Andrew Cowan (Britain), [Mercedes, 423, 6; Voshi Iwasita (Japan), Datsun, 435, 7; John Hellier (Kenya), Datsun, 404, 8; Jochi Kleint ..(West Germany),; Opel, 442, 9; Bjorn Sweden), Mercedes, 453, 10. I