By 
EAST Tyrone duo Keith McIvor and David Burns produced a performance to remember during an adventure they will never forget at the epic MRF Tyres East African Safari Classic Rally.
The event sees competitors tackle monstrously long stages over nine days of action when they travelled over 3,000 kilometres, dodged the local wildlife and the sometimes daunting terrain.
Behind the wheel of their Mk II Ford Escort, which isn’t the vehicle most would choose for success at the biennial event with Porsche 911s the car of choice, Cookstown driver McIvor and Stewartstown navigator Burns, who also work together at KDM Hire, they finished a remarkable fifth overall, first in class and the top novice crew.
And while delighted to have achieved some success on the dusty, bumpy and downright difficult East African stages, they were just pleased to have been able to not only enjoy the adventure of the event, but to have also raised over
£20,000 to provide clean, safe water for hundreds of families in a remote Kenyan village through their Killycolp to Kenya fundraiser with the FAME – Friends of Africa Missionary Endeavour.
Having undertaken the Roger Albert Clark Rally, which sees competitors race for five days in England Scotland and Wales, every other November in 2019, 2021 and 2023, McIvor and Burns are no strangers to testing the limits of their stamina and their partnership, but the East African Safari Classic is a completely different animal – and with giraffes and zebras and wildebeest roaming the stages, there are different animals too! – to it’s British counterpart with individual stages over 100 kilometres in length and the heat just adding to its unique challenges.
With all that in mind, Burns admits he and McIvor went out to Africa with the ambition to enjoy the rally rather than achieve any specific result and they are glad that was the approach they took.
“What an experience!,” Burns beamed. “It’s a fantastic event and, look, you talk about a mad amount of memories we’ll all take away from it.
“We had taken a lot of advice from people who had competed in it before. Gary McElhinney came down and spoke to us and gave us a few pointers. But I remember his words that night, he said ‘you’ll remember this as an adventure, so treat it as an adventure. Don’t worry about the rally, the rally will come itself’ and that’s exactly what it was. It was a massive adventure.”
While the adventure came first, stunning results did follow with the pair guiding their Escort to fifth place overall, first in class and the top novice award, but Burns acknowledges, they did more than ride their luck throughout the nine days of action when they took on some big names, beating several of them in the process.
“We hadn’t talked about position going into it, finishing every stage and finishing the rally was our aim,” he added. “We just wanted to finish and we were thinking if you could make the top 15 you’d be doing all right because there were some big names [including former F1 driver, Jos Verstappen; World Rally Championship duo, Jourdan Serderidis and Gregoire Munster, as well as Ferdi Porsche and ex-Top Gear presenter, Chris Harris] and some good drivers even seeded behind us. When we saw the entry list we were wondering what lies we told to get seeded where we were!
“We were fortunate, we didn’t have one flat wheel, yes we broke on steering arm on one stage with six kilometres to go but we were able to limp back to service. So, we never had a breakdown, which is remarkable.
“We had a lot of luck. If I’m honest and we got away with a lot of things that others didn’t get away with. We didn’t take any chances and just played a really safe game and the result on its own came.”
As well as enjoying no shortage of on-event success, they also achieved above and beyond their aspirations off the stages by raising over £20,000 for FAME and Burns admits they have been blown away by the support they received.
“Keith took the opportunity to raise money for a charity out there that has been supported by a lot of local people here in Cookstown who have gone out as missionaries. We ran a justgiving page and we had a massive amount of support,” he said. “A lot of our customers surprised us massively by how much that they contributed towards it. It’s been phenomenal all together. There’s great, kind people in the country to be honest in supporting a very worthy need.
“Being out there, we don’t realise in the developed world how fortunate we are with having simple things such as running water and even electric, but as a race of people, the Kenyans are very friendly people and they are happy in their own right. It’s a different world, a lovely country and very scenic.”
