Safari Rallyt; Past winner is a hero.

Mention the East African Safari Rally and it is not long before the name of five times winner of that world famous event, Shekhar Mehta, crops up. Sadly Shekhar died last year, but his presence at the 2003 and 2005 Safari Classic rallies did much to help them establish the present status of the Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic Rally, a major international rally due to start from Mombasa next Monday.

Shekhar´s spirit will certainly be present at the 2007 Safari Classic. His five Safari wins were all obtained in Datsuns and it is thus no surprise to know that these cars outnumber the other marques on the Safari Classic. Of the fifty-eight entries, no fewer than twenty are Datsuns of one kind or another.

And one Datsun 240Z in particular has a little bit more of a connection with Shekhar´s history than most. Entered and driven by Imi Dewji and co-driven by Hanif Moledina, both British residents, this is an original 240Z dating from the early 1970s and will be running with competition number thirty-one. This is the same number as the 240Z with which Shekhar Mehta finished second on the 1971 Safari - his first drive in the big Datsun sports car - and with which he completed a Datsun 240Z one-two with the outright winner that year, Edgar Herrmann. Shekhar´s first victory on the Safari came two years later when he won outright in another 240Z.

Imi Dewji has done both previous Safari Classics and for him it is a passion to follow in the footsteps of his role model and hero : "I´m doing this event one more time to pay tribute to one of the finest rally drivers the world has ever seen. And the 240Z that I am driving is almost identical to the one he drove all those years ago."


» Pressrelease från Safarirallyt, www.eastafricansafarirally.com.

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