. Essa

By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA –
ZAMBIA’s rally ace, Mohammed Essa today goes into the must-win final leg of the Africa Rally Championship (ARC) in Madagascar with a vivid message from the local rally fans to ‘bring back our trophy’.
Otherwise put in hashtag #BringBackOurTrophy, Essa knows he is fighting a hard battle whose main opponent is Ivory Coast driver Gary Chaynes but just has to win it for Zambia and bring the prestigious trophy back home.
Though he will not be defending the African title, a win for Essa will entail that the African championship stays in Zambia after his compatriot, Jassy Singh won it last year.
Incidentally, when Singh was winning last year’s title, there were celebrations in the country as he had simply retained the trophy from another Zambian who happens to be Essa.
Essa won the trophy for the first time in 2012 but missed last year’s campaign due to school commitments and allowed a fellow Zambian in Singh to have a go at the title and did a decent job to grab it.
That meant Zambia had won the title for two years in a roll though with different drivers and a third on the spin is on cards and it will be a young rally driver to do the honours again for the country.
However, Essa knows that he trails the leaders Gary Chaynes by a precious eight points and needs nothing less than a win to stand any chance of putting his hands on the immaculate globe-like trophy from FIA.
A win for Essa will give him 25 points and will take his tally to 118 and he has to hope that Chaynes, who has led the African standings the whole year, does not finish second as that will give the Ivorian 18 points, pushing up to 119 points.
Quite gloomy the situation looking at how Chaynes has performed this year but coming from a racing family, Essa has seen enough drama to encourage him push for the title.
He can start plucking some courage from the fact that he is in a position to win despite missing the opening race in Chaynes home country, Ivory Coast, which the local won to go 25 points clear, leaving Essa to play catch-up.
That catch-up business got on a good start as Essa won the next two rallies in South Africa and Zambia to move to 50 points but Chaynes edged him by finishing second and third in the two events, respectively.
This put Chaynes on 58 points but with Essa winning the Rwanda Rally and Chaynes coming second, the Zambian came to within a point of the leader with 75 points.
A gearbox problem in Uganda for Essa meant Chaynes won that rally to open up the eight-point gap which has to be obliterated this weekend and the Zambian came second.
If he needs any encouragement, the local rally fans have reminded him that Zambia is the most successful rallying country in Africa winning it 12 times in the last 25 years.