Career
He spent his childhood at his parents' farm in Limuru. His first tastes of driving occurred when he was aged around ten, as he helped his mother when she got stuck at farm roads during rainy seasons. He went to St. Mary's High School, but was more interested in repairing cars and motorcycles. He also competed in motocross winning the national 125 cc title in 1979 and 1980. He competed at the Safari Rally first time in 1983 driving a Nissan pick-up navigated by Gavin Bennett, reaching ninth position and a class victory, gaining the attention of rally people.
His first victorious national rally was Nakuru Rally in 1987 while driving a Toyota Celica twin-cam turbo navigated by Ian Munro. Duncan won his first national championship the same year winning most of the races. He won the 1987 national Motor Sportsman of the Year Award.
Having competed with a Group A Subaru Legacy and Toyota Celica Turbo 4WD in the 1990s. Apart from Safari Rally, he competed in WRC rallies only few times. The best result was finishing 8th overall and winning the Group N class in a Subaru Legacy at the 1990 Acropolis Rally in Greece, navigated by Yvonne Mehta (the wife of Shekhar Mehta).
Later he was running a non-homologated Toyota Hilux with a turbocharged 4.5 L engine in the Kenyan National Rally Championship (KNRC). In November 2006 Duncan won Guru Nanak Rally, becoming the first driver to win a KNRC round for tenth time. He was imposed a four percent time penalty due to his non-homologated vehicle. He extended the record in 2007 by winning Guru Nanak Rally again.
Duncan has won the Rhino Charge off-road event in 1998, 2006 and 2007. He has competed in motorcycling. In 2003, he was the runner up of Kenyan enduro, motocross as well as rally championships.
He introduced his newest rally car, a Nissan Patrol pick-up, in October 2008. In 2008 he also won the national autocross championship. In 2009, 15 years after winning the Safari Rally proper, Duncan won the Safari classic rally driving a 1967 Ford Mustang navigated by his current navigator Amaar Slatch. The defending champion Björn Waldegård was left to the second place.
In 2011 he won the Kenyan National Rally Championship for the sixth time. Duncan entered the 2011 Classic Safari Rally as a defending champion, now driving a Ford Capri. He finished seventh The next year he became close to win his second Safari Rally, now with ARC status, but lost to Carl Tundo by just 15 seconds
Read more about this topic: Ian Duncan
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)