Safari Rally

It's fair to say Ari was not among the favourites to win this most gruelling of World Championship rounds. This rally, more than any other, was perceived as the domain of endurance event specialists, and Vatanen was participating in it for only the second time. In contrast, his Opel team-mate Rauno Aaltonen was starting his 20th Safari! In fact, few pundits expected Vatanen to even finish.

"This one was definitely against the run of play, as far as my career goes. For once luck played into my hands.

We had been delayed by major problems, when the half-shafts began pulling out of the differential. First the rear wheels would assume an ever sillier negative camber and eventually we'd just lose the drive altogether, as the shaft popped out from the diff. We lost several hours in repairs. We also hit a donkey and all sorts of other things happened.

Jean Todt had come out to see the rally and figure out which driver to take for his upcoming Peugeot 205T16 car. When I saw him at the start of a stage I took the start very gently to prove that I can also be a thinking driver. My acting paid off...

Starting the last section from Kakamega to Nairobi we were lying sixth and well over two hours behind the leader. Then, one by one all those crews ahead of us - Vic Preston Jr., Rauno Aaltonen, Timo Salonen, etc. - they all ran into trouble one way or another. So at dawn we found ourselves in the lead, but chased hard by Hannu Mikkola's recovering Audi. We were fretting with Terry (Harryman), trying to work out what the real situation was: did we still lead, or had Hannu caught us. And at the same time the rear axle problem was raring its head again. Just when the half-shafts were about to pop out of the diff again we reached Nairobi and won the rally!

A Safari win was regarded as part of the 'grand chelem' of rally triumphs, so the result was sweet indeed."

In the end Ari had managed to beat Hannu Mikkola by six minutes, which in those days was a narrow margin by Safari standards. This also happened to be the first ever WRC victory for the hugely experienced Terry Harryman.