Who’d have thought a rally this bruising would produce a battle so pleasing?
It had the right players – the two most recent world champions, Sébastien Ogier and Thierry Neuville.
It had the right tempo – building up nicely with a final day crescendo featuring joint stage wins and a significant lead change.
But it didn’t have the right result – Ogier was a fully deserving winner and looked to have the rally just about won anyway before Neuville’s double rear puncture, but we all wanted to see this fight settled by the drivers, not by any misfortune.
For a more in-depth analysis of this absorbing Acropolis battle, make sure you sign up to Club DirtFish.
In the meantime, here’s what we learned from Acropolis Rally Greece 2026.
Sordo demonstrates Ogier’s brilliance
We perhaps take it for granted just how supremely capable Sébastien Ogier is. We judge him by his standards as the reigning world champion, which is of course totally fair.
But another uber-experienced member of the service park offers a clear comparison as to just how remarkable it is for Ogier to still be on top.
Sordo is 43, one year older than Ogier but both have the same birth year. Sordo’s peak was also never as high as Ogier’s – remember 2010, when Ogier’s meteoric rise effectively pushed the established Sordo out the door at Citroën.
Sordo is also contesting far fewer rallies than Ogier, which won’t help his rhythm. But Sordo showed signs of age in Greece, struggling in particular with creating new pacenotes for the plentiful new stages last week.
Competing at the very sharp end of rallying is becoming “harder” for the Spaniard, which is no slight against him whatsoever. It’s to be expected. However it equally serves to demonstrate just how obscene it is for Ogier to still be the benchmark driver, nearly 20 years since he made his first top-class start.
And by the sounds of it, a history-making 10th world title might really be on the cards again…
Solberg still not through his tricky patch
Five rallies, four crashes. Oliver Solberg’s sparkling start to 2026 is beginning to feel like a distant memory.
There’s not too much we can say that we haven’t already pondered following his accident at last month’s Japan. What’s perhaps of most interest here is the problem isn’t limited to just Tarmac, but gravel too.
What happens next? For the first time (in public at least) Solberg admitted he needs to change his approach because clearly it’s not all coming together.
With a 55-point deficit to Evans, the title now looks improbable, but perhaps that’s the best thing for him. Solberg can now just chase results, and he has the comfort of heading to Estonia next – the rally he took by storm to claim his first career win in 2025.
The trouble is, if he doesn’t have the speed there, do we start asking different questions?
McErlean and Armstrong both deliver career bests
Jon Armstrong got the stage win; Josh McErlean got the result. More importantly, both of M-Sport’s Irishmen delivered career best performances in the WRC.
McErlean’s rally was the result of discipline and patience, but also perseverance as he and co-driver Eoin Treacy had to fix a broken damper ahead of Saturday’s final stage.
The 26-year-old kept his head down to avoid the drama on nearly all of the stages to deliver a top-six finish. It had initially been fourth until he was penalized one minute for a seatbelt breach, but this was still a strong performance from the Irishman.
Armstrong meanwhile delivered on the promise that seemed obvious since he sat in a Rally1 car, setting the fastest time on SS5 by 0.6s over Ogier to consolidate third position overall. Road position helped, but he was fully deserving of his milestone.
A puncture and a terminal turbo problem on the very next stage was a cruel return, but the 31-year-old showed strong speed from effectively first on the road (behind Jourdan Serderidis) on Saturday and Sunday to make this M-Sport’s most encouraging event of the season by a long way.
Katsuta’s championship challenger status grows
One of the questions we asked ahead of the second half of the season was whether Takamoto Katsuta can remain in the championship picture.
Since winning back-to-back events in Kenya and Croatia and therefore leading the championship, the quality of his performances have slipped (although he remained Elfyn Evans’ closest rival at 20 points behind).
The Acropolis acts as evidence that Katsuta really is in this fight for the long haul – and not just because he reduced Evans’ advantage to 11 points after the rally.
His mental attitude – a clear weakness last time out in Japan – was impeccable in Greece. Before even arriving in Loutraki, he worked hard to mentally prepare himself: “We know it’s going to be disappointing when I see the time for sure,” he told DirtFish on Thursday. “But there is no chance anyway, so I just try to accept.”
It showed. As low as ninth after the first gravel stage, hamstrung by running second on the road, Katsuta eventually grabbed his fourth podium of the season in third. In short, it was the kind of assured performance we’ve come to expect from Evans (who it must be said drove as well as Katsuta, but was beset by his Saturday puncture).
Championship contender? How can’t Katsuta be when he remains this close to the front?
Rossel’s WRC2 title bid in tatters
Yohan Rossel doesn’t need a WRC2 title to prove his worth, but that doesn’t make his engine failure in Greece any more galling.
Mistakes in both Monte Carlo and Portugal were bad news for the Lancia driver’s championship, as he’d have to carry one of those low scores towards his final total.
Victories in Croatia and Canarias effectively offset those, but Rossel’s exit from the Acropolis has more or less doomed his chances.
The Frenchman only has two rallies left to score on, and of course he could win them both. That would leave him with 102 points, but the WRC2 champion has never scored so few since Pierre-Louis Loubet in 2019.
Things couldn’t look any rosier for Acropolis winner, Robert Virves, though. The Estonian won his second event in as many points-scoring starts, and he’s heading for home next. The battle against Teemu Suninen (who has one win and one second-place finish) could be crucial in deciding the championship.
Fourmaux’s gravel trend continues
Déjà vu – and not in a good way as far as Adrien Fourmaux’s conceded.
Twice now the Frenchman has been ahead of his Hyundai team-mate Neuville on a gravel rally this season before a puncture has dropped him back.
Fourmaux’s started 11 WRC gravel rallies for Hyundai and led on over half of them, but he keeps failing to get the result he craves. Is that pure bad luck? Is there something in his driving that’s causing it? He himself plans to analyze exactly that after Greece – although the one-minute penalty he was handed was definitely avoidable.
Whatever the root cause is, if Fourmaux still has the desgins he says he does on this year’s drivers’ championship, he needs this trend to end – and soon.
