Thierry Neuville leads Acropolis Rally Greece by 11 seconds over Sébastien Ogier, with M-Sport’s Jon Armstrong completing the top-three after Friday morning.
Ogier took the early lead of the event after Thursday’s superspecial before the crews and their cars boarded the overnight ferry from Corinth to Itea ahead of Friday’s rough and rocky gravel tracks.
With road position coming to the fore, Hyundai pair Neuville and Adrien Fourmaux hit the front – Fourmaux winning the opening stage but Neuville grabbing the lead from Ogier.
Another stage win for Fourmaux on SS3 earned him a 1.2s advantage over his team-mate and a 14.1s gap to Toyota driver Ogier, who suggested Fourmaux had a “different risk approach” to him.
However Fourmaux’s victory bid took a knock on the final stage of the loop as his front-right tire punctured, costing him half a minute and dropping him to fourth.
“The tire wear was OK, but I don’t know why [we got a puncture],” Fourmaux said. “I didn’t get any hard impact, but there are so many loose rocks that it can happen. It’s life.”
Ogier’s response on Stiri was strong regardless – the only stage of the day that’s unchanged compared to 2025.
The world champion went fastest by 1.9s to trail rally leader Neuville by 11s, who set an equal second fastest time with Armstrong on SS4.
“It was quite close at the end with the tire wear,” Neuville said, “I should probably have started with six new this morning, but I didn’t expect it to be so rough. It’s going to be a very long weekend, so we need to keep our head cool and enjoy the driving.”
Armstrong is 21.2s off the lead and 7.3s ahead of Fourmaux; setting just the eighth-best time on SS2 but two top-three times on the rest of the loop.
“We know with the road position we have to try and use it, so it’s good that it’s going in our direction,” Armstrong said.
Sami Pajari had been inside the top-five but dropped behind M-Sport’s Josh McErlean and Mãrtiņš Sesks with a “weird” moment on SS4 where he briefly stopped, and appeared to be refastening his seatbelts.
The Toyota driver didn’t know what happened, though: “Something weird I need to check what’s going on. I’m sorry, I don’t know,” he said.
Both McErlean and Sesks arrived at the end of SS4 with delaminated tires, separated by just 1.5s on the leaderboard.
Championship leader and road sweeper Elfyn Evans is ninth, 1m18.6s off Neuville’s lead, with Takamoto Katsuta one position and 23s ahead.
“The morning’s generally been worse than what we expected and we expected it to be pretty bad, so it’s not been easy out there,” Evans rued. “The road sweeping is horrendous.”
Oliver Solberg and Dani Sordo were both held back by punctures on Friday morning; Solberg’s front-left let go on SS2 while Sordo stopped to change a tire on SS3. They’re 10th and 11th as a result.
