Saturday 26th November, Day Seven, Naivasha Spa Lodge

As the 2011 East African Safari Classic Rally did a loop around the Great Rift Valley on day seven, the Kick Energy Datsun of Steve Perez and Staffan Parmander endured all sorts of dramas including a brush with team-mate Andrew Siddall but still managed to climb the leader board.

When the leading crews departed from Naivasha at the beginning of the day, dark clouds and the odd flash of lightning gave everyone a hint of things to come. Almost immediately news filtered through that the second test had been cancelled due to the unseasonably heavy rains. The first section consisted of a 67km run up towards the picturesque Lake Baringo but Steve lost time mid way through this stage when the car stalled in a river crossing and took a while to restart.

The final section was an 84km run back down through the scenic Kerio Valley and over the infamous God's Bridge. At 2300 metres, this portion of the stage was the highest in the entire rally and as soon as he began the stage, Steve's Datsun 260Z developed a misfire which was to stay with him throughout the section.

This additional distraction, coupled with the already treacherous conditions saw the Datsun slide from ditch to ditch. Almost half way through the test the car slid into yet another ditch and whilst attempting to extract the car, fellow Kick Energy driver Andrew Siddall came along and was unable to stop in the slippery mud and bounced off of Steve's car. This resulted in both crews ending up back in the ditches lining the stage meaning more time was lost extracting the Datsuns and Steve would ultimately lose over half an hour to the leaders but despite this the multiple British champion has moved up to fifth overall.

A rather wet and muddy Steve made it back in Naivasha at the end of the day and commented: "Of all the cars that had to slide into me, it had to be one of my team-mates! And to make it worse our fellow Gentleman's World Rally Club (G-WRC) competitor Geoff Bell continues to lead both our own little championship and the overall rally. We picked up a misfire in the last stage which was very distracting but hopefully the BTR guys can solve this tonight."

Tomorrow is the penultimate day of this year's rally and will see crews pass through Nairobi and head down towards Voi, on the borders of the Tsavo National Park. Four sections face the crews, including the Athi River super special on the fringes of Nairobi. So far the competitors have tackled an incredible 1465 kilometres of competitive rallying action and still have another two days of high speed rallying ahead of them.

Daily Total Kilometres: 655.93km
Event Total Kilometres to date: 3281.11km

Daily bulletins will be issued by the Vodka Kick Rally Team press office throughout the event. For further details please visit www.eastafricansafarirally.com