Sébastien Loeb has stormed back into the lead of Acropolis Rally Greece on Friday’s final stage, denying Pierre-Louis Loubet his first chance to lead a round of the World Rally Championship overnight.
At 14.28 miles, Bauxites was the longest stage of Friday – presenting a big challenge for the drivers right at the very end of the day.
Fresh from winning the first two stages of his WRC career, Loubet held a 7.8s advantage over Esappekka Lappi ahead of SS6, but a brilliant performance from Loeb put the younger Frenchman on the ropes.
Loubet shipped exactly 10s to Loeb after setting just the ninth fastest time, but it transpired that all was not well aboard his Ford Puma Rally1.
“We can be happy with what we have done but we had an issue with the brake at the beginning of the stage and something with the power-steering at the end, so we just bring the car through,” Loubet explained.
“We miss the first position by not a lot but with what happened on that last one I can be happy.”
Loeb survived a two-wheeled moment right at the end of the stage but that didn’t disturb his rhythm. The nine-time champion laid down a statement of intent, not just overhauling Loubet but beating Lappi by 9.2s to pass him too, lying 8.7s ahead overall.
“I decided to try really hard in this one because I was losing too much time in the previous one,” Loeb said. “I said ‘OK I need to finish a good rhythm.’”
And that he did. But Lappi wasn’t worried about slipping down a position.
“It’s fine for me,” he confirmed. “I’m very happy with my day to be fair. All good.”
Thierry Neuville is the fourth driver within a realistic fighting distance of overnight leader Loeb after Friday but had a tougher ask than the three ahead of him, with a far higher position on the road order as third in the points standings arriving in Greece.
“We had a really clean run through the day so that was important and that has to be the goal tomorrow as well,” Neuville surmised.
Ott Tänak had lost two positions on the previous stages and was more determined than ever to recover the lost ground on Bauxites – but not just because he wanted to end the day as far up the leaderboard as possible.
With Saturday’s running order dictated by Friday night’s Rally1 classification in reverse, any positions gained would give Tänak a better place on the road for the next day.
“Of course I had to try hard to get some kind of road position for tomorrow,” he said, but he was still without the use of his 100kW hybrid unit.
“All the stage was uphill and we have no hybrid, we’ve been carrying just 100kg for nothing for over half a day. But that’s all I could do.”
Tänak did manage to jump back past Elfyn Evans, pegging the Toyota driver back to a 3.4s deficit. But a strong run from Dani Sordo ensured fifth spot overnight remained in Sordo’s hands.
Sordo is in fact closer to his other team-mate Neuville than he is Tänak; he heads Tänak by 8.9s but is just 6.2s shy of Neuville.
Evans meanwhile didn’t just lose position to Tänak but was usurped by British compatriot Gus Greensmith too – Greensmith holding seventh position by a slim 0.6s.
“Every time I wanted to brake I had to press the entire pedal to the floor,” he explained.
Kalle Rovanperä faced a similar predicament to his closest championship rival Tänak, but the Toyota driver could do less to save himself.
Lying down in ninth, he was too far away to make a real difference and faced an even tricky road than the Hyundai.
“Tomorrow is again a different challenge. Hopefully we can do a bit more when we have a slightly better road position,” said Rovanperä. “On this one I was just trying to get through, the car was feeling quite strange.”
Rovanperä will head into Saturday’s stages fourth on the road, ahead of Takamoto Katsuta – who was “really not happy” with a day after ending it over half a minute adrift of his team-mate – Craig Breen (who punctured on SS4) and privateer Jourdan Serderidis.
Breen, who struggled to come to terms with his barren run continuing through no fault of his own, suffered some late drama when the rubber door sealing of his Puma Rally1 detached itself and started flapping around in the cockpit.
“This stupid rubber door seal came down and it’s obviously sticky and it was getting stuck on my arm all the time, it was kind of the way the day was going and it ended like that,” he said.
