Pierre-Louis Loubet leads a round of the World Rally Championship for the first time, scoring his first career stage win at the top level as M-Sport team-mate Sébastien Loeb made a mistake.
Loeb has led the Acropolis since Friday’s opener, the first pass of Loutraki, winning all three stages prior to SS5 – albeit sharing that honor with Esapekka Lappi on the previous test.
But Loeb got it wrong on Dafni, having to reverse his Ford Puma Rally1 at a hairpin when he was too late on the brakes.
“After a flat left into a right hairpin, I was a bit too late [on the brakes], I couldn’t rotate the car, I had to reverse,” he explained.
Loubet, who was second fastest on SS2 on Friday morning and third fastest on SS3, was epic regardless of Loeb’s fumble though.
He was 3.3 seconds faster than anybody else to vault into a 1.9s rally lead.
“No!? That’s good,” said a jubilant Loubet.
“It was close so many times this year, so we deserve this one. I had good pacenotes but I’m a bit surprised.”
Dafni is the final stage the crews have to complete before heading into a tire fitting zone prior to the final two stages of Friday.
Tire conservation – as well as some quite dramatic road cleaning – therefore became a major topic.
Neuville lost ground to rally leader Loeb on the previous test but had been strategic, saving some hard compound Pirellis for the Dafni stage.
With four hards bolted onto his Hyundai, while most of his rivals had at least two softs somewhere on the car, Neuville profited on SS5 relative to those around him in the running order.
“I did what I could, but the handling is completely different in this stage than the rest, it’s a bit more wavey,” Neuville said.
“For these kind of stages I need to work a bit more on the chassis.”
He beat Loeb by 4.4 seconds to trim the overall deficit to three seconds, but actually lost a position to Lappi who set the quickest time.
Lappi admitted he was “surprised” by his stage time, so he’ll likely be even more surprised to lurk just 2.3s shy of Loeb and 0.7s ahead of Neuville.
Ott Tänak may be compromised without his hybrid unit, but he is firmly best of the rest behind the top four despite the additional handicap of running second on the road.
He ran with hard tires across the front axle and softs at the rear, and those softs looked rather worse for wear by the time the 2019 world champion made the end of the stage.
Tänak however was faster than only Kalle Rovanperä ahead of him in the running order.
“We can follow a bit Kalle’s lines, but without hybrid and a lot of hairpins uphill it’s a proper struggle on this one,” Tänak remarked.
The Italy, Finland and Ypres Rally winner is fifth, but it’s all extremely close behind with sixth-placed Hyundai team-mate Dani Sordo just 1.6s back and only a tenth ahead of Elfyn Evans.
Evans didn’t have a good time on Dafni: “Awful, really, really awful,” he said. “The grip was so low it was hard to find confidence.”
Rovanperä is eighth – 4.6s behind M-Sport Ford’s Gus Greensmith who lambasted himself as he crossed the stage finish, saying “I had it in my notes.”
But what did he have in his notes?
“Just at the beginning one of the hairpins I had a warning to brake in time but I completely overshot it,” he said, making the exact same error that team-mate Loeb made.
Takamoto Katsuta has been the lowest classified of the works Rally1 drivers for most of the morning before moving up a place at the expense of Craig Breen who punctured, but Katsuta’s pace on SS5 was far more representative of his natural ability.
With hard tires fitted to his Toyota and contesting a stage that was brand-new for everyone, Katsuta was finally in the mix – going seventh fastest, 9.5s off the pace, when he’d been slowest all morning prior. But the upturn in pace surprised him.
“Ah really?” he said, when seeing his stage time relative to the rest.
“OK it’s something a little bit better, but feeling wise it’s very, very let’s say uncomfortable. It’s strange.”
Breen however was even faster, deciding to throw caution to the wind after losing two minutes with his flat on the previous stage.
“It’s a good step, obviously that stage is cleaning like hell,” Breen caveated.
“Honestly just so frustrated with what happened before, completely in the middle of the road didn’t touch anything. Lucky us again, it is what it is.”
