Sébastien Ogier is hunting Thierry Neuville down as the pair battle to win Acropolis Rally Greece.
Neuville led round eight of the 2026 World Rally Championship by 9.7 seconds at the end of Friday, but Ogier’s Toyota set the pace on Saturday’s opening stage.
After beating Neuville again on SS9, Ogier whittled Neuville’s lead down to 4.9 seconds. But Neuville responded with a stage win on SS10 – growing his lead back up to 6.3s.
World champion Ogier suggested throughout the morning that it was still too early to engage in battle; instead, the focus had to be on himself and avoiding trouble. But he grabbed another 2.6s from Neuville on SS11 to trail by just 3.7s overall.
“It’s OK, honestly,” Neuville insisted. “We just struggle with grip in this sandy section so I’m on the limit of the grip I can have.”
Adrien Fourmaux remains in third place overall, but suffered a scare on SS10 when he slid wildly wide before recovering the car.
“Huge mistake in my pacenotes, so it was a big save,” Fourmaux admitted. “We are quite lucky. After that I decided to be a bit more calm.”
The Frenchman is 56s off the lead but over a minute clear of Takamoto Katsuta, who picked off both M-Sport’s Josh McErlean and Mãrtiņš Sesks over the course of the morning,
McErlean completes the top five while a struggling Sesks also lost position to championship leader Elfyn Evans, who lurks just 8.7s adrift of McErlean in sixth.
“I don’t understand what has changed,” Sesks surmised, “because everything is the same but I guess the stages are different and we couldn’t get a feeling and the rhythm with the car.”
Sami Pajari has set his sights on Dani Sordo’s eighth place, but his bid wasn’t helped by a spin through a muddy section of SS10. However the Finn beat Sordo by 11.9s on the final stage of the loop to head back to service 16.9s behind.
“We saw some horses before the stage and we were discussing about it with Dani, so maybe I distracted him somehow,” Pajari smiled. “I need to keep up with that.”
Oliver Solberg and Jon Armstrong both restarted after their respective problems on Friday, with Armstrong setting strong pace considering his second place start position.
Solberg meanwhile struggled for confidence, outpacing Armstrong by only 3.2s across the four-stage loop despite starting one car behind him.
Andreas Mikkelsen stretched his WRC2 lead over Toksport Škoda team-mate Robert Virves to 13.3s over the course of the morning, having started the day 8.2s ahead.
Yohan Rossel however retired with engine issues – a severe dent to his WRC2 title hopes as he retired from legs in both Monte Carlo and Portugal.
