Thierry Neuville beat Sébastien Ogier to the fastest time on Acropolis Rally Greece’s shakedown by just one tenth of a second.
Toyota has dominated the first half of the 2026 World Rally Championship, but Hyundai is expected to be more competitive across the final seven events which are all held on gravel.
Neuville, who’ll start Friday’s stages seventh on the road, set a benchmark time of 2m13.4s on the Loutraki shakedown, which hasn’t been used since 2013 in the opposite direction.
Crucially, he was also quickest on the first pass which is the most representative for what the competitive rally will be like.
Reigning world champion Ogier was third after the first run behind Toyota team-mate Oliver Solberg, but improved to finish second, a tenth shy of Neuville.
Solberg eventually posted the fourth-best shakedown time, 2.3s adrift of Neuville, with Adrien Fourmaux’s Hyundai slotting into third, 0.3s up on Solberg.
Takamoto Katsuta’s mood was boosted by winning a World Cup inspired penalty shootout between the drivers on Wednesday evening, and he completed the top five ahead of fellow GR Yaris Rally1 pilot Sami Pajari.
The pair will start Friday’s leg second and fourth respectively, and therefore finished ninth and eighth fastest after the first pass of shakedown.
M-Sport’s Josh McErlean was fourth quickest on the first pass but faded to eighth by the end of the session, 0.6s behind team-mate Mãrtiņš Sesks.
Dani Sordo was ninth ahead of world championship leader Elfyn Evans and Jon Armstrong, while the Škodas of Andreas Mikkelsen and Robert Virves placed first and second of the WRC2 runners.
