Any hopes of Elfyn Evans recovering to score a point on Acropolis Rally Greece’s Saturday classification have been dashed by a rollover – with Ott Tänak narrowly escaping an identical fate at the same corner.
Approaching a very slow and tight downhill right-hand hairpin, a wheel became caught in a rut and tipped Evans’ Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 over onto its roof, with spectators running to his aid and putting the ailing Yaris back on its wheels.
After stopping to allow team-mate Sébastien Ogier through to avoid dust impacting the eight-time world champion’s visibility, Evans proceeded to the finish at a reduced pace, losing five minutes in total.
“I just clipped a rut in a very slow hairpin, went over super slow but the damage is obvious,” said Evans.
A few minutes later Ott Tänak, running in fourth place, almost suffered exactly the same fate. His eyes widening in surprise, Tänak quickly dumped an armful of opposite lock into his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 and prevented his car from rolling over after bouncing onto two wheels.
“I could go to the circus maybe,” joked Tänak after his two-wheel moment. “It’s obviously a very sharp downhill hairpin and you can’t see anything, you just go with the feeling But probably there was a step in the line or something that caught us laterally and tried to flip us over.”
Evans then pulled over on the road section after his roll with damaged power steering, which he attempted to fix roadside, with the bonnet then cable tied down afterwards. Despite a shattered windscreen, Evans elected not to remove it before the final stage of Saturday, the EKO superspecial this evening.
Championship leader Thierry Neuville extended his advantage over Hyundai team-mate Dani Sordo to 52.6s, with Sordo just trying to reach the finish after sustaining damage from a delaminated tire on the first pass.
That earlier damage removed the right-rear quarter panel, allowing dust to ingress the cockpit. While a makeshift solution with a metal sheet and tape had successfully kept the dust out of Sordo’s cockpit on Loutraki, it finally began to leak on Aghii Theodori’s second pass, coating both he and co-driver Candido Carrera in dust.
“It was hard honestly,” said Sordo. “A lot of stones. I didn’t want to make a mistake, I didn’t want to have another puncture so I just drove through, controlling a little bit the time with Seb.”
Ogier has closed the gap to second place down to 26.9s – but with only a short asphalt superspeical to go on Saturday, he doesn’t have enough mileage available to take second place on pace alone before the first set of points are assigned later today.
A WRC2 win is crucial for Sami Pajari to keep his title hopes alive
Sami Pajari and Robert Virves were briefly drawn closer after adjusted times were issued for SS7, when both were impacted by Tänak’s double tire change within the same stage.
But Pajari has re-established a healthy 28.2s lead in WR2C and for fifth place overall, helped by a punctures for Virves on the second pass of Aghii Theodori.
Yohan Rossel is closing on both of them with stages wins on the two Saturday afternoon gravel stages but is still 55.2s behind Pajari with only Saturday’s superspecial and three gravel stages on Sunday remaining with which to close that gap.
Kajetan Kajetanowicz was elevated to eighth overall after fellow Śkoda Fabia RS Rally2 runner Fabrizio Zaldivar stopped to change a puncture on Aghii Theodori.
That stoppage for Zaldivar, plus a similar problem for Josh McErlean on the same stage, also promoted Georg Linnamaë to ninth overall, with Zaldivar slipping to 10th.
