World Rally Championship points leader Thierry Neuville has moved into the lead of Acropolis Rally Greece, after Hyundai team-mate Dani Sordo suffered a tire delamination on Saturday morning’s last stage.
Sordo had taken the lead from Ott Tänak when the 2019 world champion had to stop twice to change tires – once from a tire off the rim and another caused by a broken rim, costing him 51.3s to pacesetter Sébastien Ogier and dropping him to second overall.
A frustrated Sordo climbed out of his car at stage end, inspected the damage, then departed without offering an explanation for what had happened.
Neuville now holds a 35.3s lead over Sordo and spent the morning carefully managing risk and reward.
“My goals are very simple: get through the day without problems, especially without punctures,” he added rather presciently, only moments before Sordo suffered his tire drama.
Ogier won the Thiva and Aghii Theodori stages but such was his time loss from a turbo issue on Friday afternoon that he’s still 1m25.2s behind title rival Neuville. Sordo is now a slightly more realistic 49.9s up the road.
“The gap is too big,” said Ogier. “We keep doing our job as best as we can. We will see.”
Grégoire Munster should have rounded out the top five – but instead he was parked down a bank on Aghii Theodori, though how he ended up there wasn’t clear. Both he and Louis Louka were out of the car but they went no further.
That promoted Sami Pajari to the top five overall, having taken the lead in WRC2 from Robert Virves on Saturday’s opening stage.
While Pajari’s lead over Virves has grown both are being chased down by Citroën’s Yohan Rossel, who won two of Saturday’s three morning stages.
Rossel, recovering from time loss caused by a puncture on Friday’s final stage, has cut Pajari’s lead to 52.4s and is 26.3s behind Virves in second, usurping Fabrizio Zaldivar for the final podium place in the process.
“No grip on the rear, I don’t understand why,” said Rossel at the finish of Aghii Theodori. “At the beginning it seemed like a puncture but it stayed like that all the stage. But a clean run, no problem at the moment.”
Elfyn Evans is 15th but still over four minutes away from cracking the top 10 overall, making Saturday points a tough ask without attrition for the WRC2 frontrunners ahead of him.
Despite having nothing to play for on Saturday Adrien Fourmaux was still up against it anyway. “My feet are burning,” said Fourmaux at the end of Aghii Theodori. “It’s really hot in the pedal box.
“We have an issue,” he continued. “We broke an anti-roll bar on the back so it’s definitely not easy on the downhill. I’m struggling with the rear of the car.”
Takamoto Katsuta restarted on Saturday morning after taking a wheel off on the rally’s third stage following a misheard pacenote. However Saturday points are off the table for Katsuta; he is over half an hour away from the top 10 positions and yet to crack the top 50 overall.
