WRC 2024: Our eyes are firmly on the prize, says Gatimu

Veteran rally driver cum navigator Caroline Gatimu says it’s all hands-on deck as she races against time to have their car ready for the upcoming WRC Safari Rally.

Gatimu, a trailblazer in women rallying here in Kenya will be navigating her daughter Tinashe Gatimu for the second year in a row in the WRC Safari rally and she says they are hard at work in the gym to get physically ready for arguably the world’s most demanding rallying event for both man and machine.

“The cars are still being prepared, we should be able to go testing in a week or a week and a half, in terms of us Physically, we are doing a lot of exercises because we need to be really physically fit, mentally fit and we need to be really focused to be able to tackle the WRC competition.”

The Vivo Energy Kenya sponsored mother-daughter duo will be behind the wheels of a Ford Fiesta in the event set for 28-31 March 2024 in Naivasha.

Gatimu says they will need good test runs to ensure they are in good rhythm with the car ahead of the rally.

“A rally car is never really ready until you test it and drive it, so in the rally world, we are used to this because we can go test and then something just happens, but knowing who is handling them right now, we are in very capable hands; we are very confident the cars will be in tip-top shape and we will look at them physically and see the progress that has been done so far; so we don’t panic, we know everything is under control.”

Tinashe Gatimu made her debut in the WRC Safari rally last year, making her the youngest WRC entrant at the tender age of 18 years, and will hope to use the lessons picked last year to go one better this year.

Her Mother says, despite her being in school, she has aced the art of balancing her education and her passion for rallying.

“One thing with Tinashe is she is very focused and these are discussions we have had over the years, she knows how to plan her school and also her extra-curricular activities, sometimes I even think she is a better planner than us however we put everything in place.

She is actually having an exam a week before the WRC event and she is taking that very seriously; so, what she is doing is we go to school Monday to Friday then we do testing on Saturday or Sunday whenever we are able to do testing over the weekends.

But school of course remains first; for me education is very important and that is top of our list so she takes it very seriously and knowing the agreement we have she knows that she has to focus on her school first and then sports comes second.”  

The Mother-daughter crew will be joined by seasoned rally driver Pauline Sheghu alongside her navigator Linet Ayuko and Autocross sensation Jennifer Malik in the all-women rally crews for the WRC Safari rally.