The Fiat Panda's attempt at setting a new World Record and beating the time set 30 years ago by the British Army's factory-prepared Range Rover of 14 days for the non-stop drive over 10,300 miles from Cape Town to London started Friday morning.

Philip Young and Paul Brace were clocked out of the Mount Nelson Hotel by South Africa's Motor Sports Association at 6.00am and are now heading across South Africa;  reaching Botswana before 9.00pm nightfall.

An overnight drive  takes them to the River Zambezi where a pontoon,crossing the half-mile long river, takes them to the Zambia border post of Kazungula on the northern bank. There follows a day-long drive through Livingstone and on to Lusaka.

The Fiat Panda is a standard showroom-specification Panda Twin-Air, with a two-cylinder, 875cc engine. Stronger springs, a long-range fuel tank, underfloor protection and a five-inch thick foam mattress in the back, are the only modifications. It set out with just one spare wheel, running on Firestone 165-14 six-ply van tyres, with a tool kit comprising only an adjustable spanner, a hammer and a roll of tank-tape. There is no back-up service crew.

Young and Brace have set themselves a target of 1,000 miles a day for the next ten days. Progress can be viewed following by the blips of the Yellowbrick tracker on www.africarecordrun.

The planned route crosses Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Egypt, then across the top of Northern Africa through Libya to Tunisia. They must catch a ferry out of Tunisia to be on schedule.

The Panda crew are raising money for the charity Farm Africa, who work with local farmers along the route.