Another Win for Tuthill! East African Safari Classic Rally 2025

In the car world that we wander around in, everyone's like, where would you spend your last 10 quid on petrol and where would you drive? Very, very difficult to convince me that you wouldn't be in the middle of Kenya. This is a huge challenge, what we're up to out here. But every part of what we do is a huge challenge. It's a big, big job to dream up, create and produce a Porsche 911 with an 850kg curb weight and an 11,000rpm engine in it. That was a proper rally stage. That was brilliant. That was brilliant, that's what we come here for. And everything, fast stuff, flowing stuff, gnarly stuff, rocks, hairpins, water, a lot. That was a fantastic stage, loved every second of it. Fantastic feeling. I think each crew has to have a basic understanding of doing a wheel, a drive shaft but also understanding what you can and can't attempt here. It's a little bit daunting but the car is so well developed. You can tell everything we're doing is based on a failure that's happened on the 10 previous safaris that Tatio's done. So the car is incredibly well developed for this. The weakest point is the human. Where did we go now? I don't know. Nice. Much better. Good morning. Good, clean the lens too, it was dirty. Beautiful day. We have to do a whole WRC rally today in just 8 hours. Look at this level of dust. The length of the stages on the safari rally are some of the longest in the world. That's probably not surprising, it is a physical challenge. In rallying you really are competing against yourself. The mental game inside the car is not to be forgotten. And of course you've got to sit next to a guy, your co-driver, spending 8 hours in a car with anyone. That is a big deal. And when you're doing it in the environment that we find ourselves in Kenya, it's something that we need to manage. Yeah, honestly I think every day is a unique experience here. And all those things threaded together in one concentrated pair of weeks, where you literally can't think about anything else but being in the car with your co-pilot and other things, and being that focused on something is a real privilege. It's so special and it's so cool actually. I think you've just got to be prepared to use every sense you've got in your body to look ahead of the road, look at the surface, look at what's happening, what could potentially happen between the road being made and what hasn't happened. So there's so much to process when you're going around and keep an eye on the road. There's animals, there's locals, there's everything. It's sensory overload here and there's so much going on. It's a bustle of life and everyone's not really too worried about the fancy Porsches. They look at them, but really they're going about their lives. They're selling stuff, they're bringing stuff to a market, whatever they're doing, it's busy. They don't interrupt their lives for you. If they're riding a motorcycle with four foot of bamboo coming out of either side, they're not getting out of the way, you're going to have to avoid them. You've got to take your filters out, haven't you, and just go, it's Africa. I don't really like it when the rear wheel comes out so much. It's nicer, it's kind of flat. I learned that from Evgeny. He taught me that you need to roll the car, redesign it. This can be got going, I can't assume you're not stopping. A little mod. When two cars become one, it's kind of sweet, right? Gareth, just tell the boys what you're going to do here. The door shut's all slammed in on the Ferdi's car, so we're going to take the door shut off this car, and a part of the wing and graft it onto his, so we can get a door on it and get the door shut. I'll probably come through here. And then diagonally across here? Yeah, go as low as I can, come across here, and then just along the top of the jack point. The jack point's going to be broken as well, isn't it? With that? With this. Rich has got a really good system. The cars are almost identical, so the parts can be shared between all the cars. And there's a lot of cars here this time, so there's a lot of spares available for keeping us going. And the guys work and build these cars themselves, so they know them inside out. To get through, you've got to have that level of support, because things will go wrong, and you've got to get the car tip-top all the time. You know, Geoff's incident, or Louis's incident, or Yoss's, I mean, we finished work at 1.30 in the morning. I think I had four hours sleep, that was okay. It's cool. What else are you going to do? All it took is really skilled workmanship from some incredible guys and girls, and the will to make it happen. And that's the most important thing. It's not a question of whether we'll fix the car, it's when we'll fix the car and how quickly. You know, while we're having an absolute flat-out rally in our cars, the Tuthill operation that supports this is like its own army. It's moving ahead of us, it's using all its own navigation to get to places, it's having its own rally, and it's something Tuthill has done for a long time, but when you see it in action, the way I've seen it, the way they've taken care of the problems I've had along the way, it's pretty amazing the logistics that it just takes to keep moving forward, plus to resupply, have enough fuel, have enough tires, have enough spare parts with each of these vehicles to keep up with it. You know, it's their own rally, just to keep up with us, and that's daunting in itself, plus, you know, they're working outside the car in the sun, and it's hot here, it's humid. You are sweating from the moment you walk out of the hotel. I guess from the outside in, our business seems to have changed, or is changing. This is at the heart of it, and I think if you can demonstrate you can cope with this, your product can cope with this, your team can cope with this, so whilst there seems to be a huge gap between charging around Kenya with a Safari 911 and designing and building a GT1, they're actually a lot closer than you might imagine. And on the winning thing, it's nice to win, occasionally. It's important as a business to be the best, but it's not really what life's about. Not in this environment. To provide an experience for anyone these days is an honour. I mean, it's a huge privilege. What a car! Nothing in life is particularly easy, and I think as a result, everything is more rewarding. And there's nothing more rewarding than seeing 22 friends, clients, their co-drivers, sitting around a table having a beer, having had just the best day of their lives in the 911.