After a four-week summer break, the World Rally Championship resumes this week with Acropolis Rally Greece.
One of the most evocative event names on the calendar – albeit one that was absent for seven seasons before it returned in 2021 – the Acropolis can still be a tough test for man and machine, and provides a very different challenge to the preceding trio of high-speed tests in Poland, Latvia and Finland.
Here is everything you need to know about round 10 of the 2024 season.
Entry list
Total 72 crews
9 Rally1 crews
34 Rally2 crews (29 WRC2)
24 Rally3 crews (19 WRC3, 14 JWRC)
Rally1
Each Rally1 manufacturer will run three cars this week
Nine Rally1 cars are entered in Greece: three from each manufacturer. Although Kalle Rovanperä has won two out of three editions since the Acropolis returned to the WRC, he hasn’t included the event on his part-time schedule this year, so it’s Sébastien Ogier – a Greek winner back in 2011 – that joins Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta in the Toyota line-up. Having moved up to second in the drivers’ standings with his win in Secto Rally Finland, the expectation is that Ogier will contest all of the remaining rounds this season.
At Hyundai, alongside Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak there’s a return to action for Dani Sordo for the first time since Sardinia – a rally he finished in third place unsure if it might have been his last WRC appearance.
Over at M-Sport, Adrien Fourmaux and Grégoire Munster will be joined once more by Greek national Jourdan Serderidis, who announced his retirement from driving in the top category one year ago but has already been seen this season on Safari Rally Kenya.
WRC2
76% of the WRC2 starters in Greece will drive a Škoda Fabia
Given the unforgiving reputation of the Acropolis, you might forgive any WRC2 contender that decides to give this one a miss – as championship leader Oliver Solberg has decided to do. But a total of 29 drivers are entered in the category, and all of them are currently registered to fight for drivers’ points. Solberg aside, the next six best drivers in the standings will all be in Acropolis action.
After making an impressive step up to the top class for Secto Rally Finland, Sami Pajari returns to his GR Yaris Rally2 and has the chance to eliminate most of the 28-point advantage Solberg built up on the previous round. After Greece, both can nominate just one more scoring round this season.
Yohan Rossel meanwhile is only making his fifth out of seven permitted scoring appearances, and his first since a second-place finish to Pajari in Sardinia. The DG Sport-run Citroën driver is 40 points away from Solberg, and will be joined in Greece by team-mate Nikolay Gryazin, currently sixth in the standings.
Lauri Joona is one place behind Rossel in the standings after taking his second podium of the year at home in Finland, and begins life with a new co-driver in Greece with Ville Mannisenmäki (son of Tommi Mäkinen’s former navigator Risto) taking over from Janni Hussi.
Incredibly, Joona is one of 22 Škoda drivers among the 29 WRC2 entries. Others include the Toksport trio of Josh McErlean, Gus Greensmith and Pierre-Louis Loubet, plus Robert Virves, Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Fabrizio Zaldivar, whose cars have all been run by the Spanish RaceSeven squad this season.
Veteran privateers Martin Prokop and Armin Kremer also drive the latest Fabia RS Rally2, while Italian youngster Roberto Daprà is in an older Rally2 evo – as is Burcu Çetinkaya who joins the Toksport line-up for her first WRC start in six years with the legendary Fabrizia Pons in the co-driver’s seat.
Jan Solans could be another to watch on Greek gravel after winning in Portugal and finishing third in Sardinia. He’s fifth in the championship, two places ahead of fellow Toyota GR Yaris driver Georg Linnamäe.
WRC3 / Junior WRC
Acropolis Rally Greece marks the finale of Junior WRC
Just like Secto Rally Finland, the Acropolis is a Junior WRC round. Of the 14 JWRC entries, the majority are also registered for WRC3, boosting that field to 19 cars.
Romet Jürgenson continues to lead the standings by a much-reduced margin of eight points over Finland winner and fellow FIA Rally Star contender Taylor Gill – and the pair are the hot favorites to clinch the championship in this double-points finale.
Diego Domínguez is third and the Paraguayan will not count the Acropolis as one of his scoring events for WRC3, where he remains the leader courtesy of a hat-trick of wins across Portugal, Sardinia and Poland.
With his nearest WRC3 rival Mattéo Chatillon skipping Greece altogether, the non-JWRC contingent in the class is dominated by six local drivers.
Itinerary
While many stage names are familiar, there have been considerable changes to the route for the 2024 Acropolis Rally Greece. The most significant is that, for the first time since the event’s return to the WRC, the rally will not start in the capital city Athens.
The service park remains in Lamia which, after Thursday morning’s shakedown at nearby Lygaria, will host a ceremonial start in the evening before the rally officially begins on Friday morning when crews head out for a loop of three stages – Ano Pavliani, Dafni, and Tarzan.
While Tarzan is the only stage of the entire rally run in identical form to 2023, Ano Pavliani is mostly new for this year. Dafni was driven as part of the longer Pyrgos stage in 2021/22. All three are repeated after mid-day service to form the longest day of the rally in terms of competitive distance, at 83.9 miles.
Saturday is much longer in terms of hours and liaison if not in stage miles, which total 72.2. It takes the event south to roads that would previously be tackled out of Athens on a Friday. En route in the morning there are single passes of Rengini – reversed from last year – and Thiva, last used in 2021, plus a first pass of Aghii Theodori which uses a combination of familiar roads near Loutraki.
The resort of Loutraki hosts a mid-day regroup and tire-fitting zone before a new-look stage sharing the same name precedes the second pass of Aghii Theodori. The long road back to Lamia is punctuated by a super special at the Sirios motorway service station that also utilizes the Athens-bound carriageway of the A1.
With cars not due back in Lamia until after 11pm, a 45-minute service will take place on Sunday morning before the last leg of 33.6 miles. This begins with the completely new Inhori stage, followed by the more familiar Eleftherohori which, after a short final service opportunity, is repeated as the powerstage.
