Thierry Neuville has won the Acropolis Rally, his first World Rally Championship event of the Rally1 era, beating team-mates Ott Tänak and Dani Sordo to record Hyundai’s first ever 1-2-3 finish.
Neuville, who hadn’t won since Rally Spain 11 months ago, edged Tänak by 15 seconds. But it was a success marred by controversy, as tensions rose within the team due to the likelihood, and then eventual implementation, of team orders.
With championship leader Kalle Rovanperä struggling in Greece – lying just ninth after day one and then falling outside the points when he ran wide, smacked a tree with the rear of his Toyota and removed the entire tailgate as well as damaging the suspension – Tänak suddenly had a chance to make up serious ground in the title race.
Finishing ahead of Neuville would have assured him an extra seven championship points, but a call came from Hyundai Motorsport president Sean Kim after SS14 of 16 that instructed both Neuville and Tänak to hold station and protect a historical formation finish.
Tänak won the powerstage, while Rovanperä was second, so Tänak reduced Rovanperä’s points lead by 19 to 53 points. Neuville is another 23 points back.
Hyundai also took a good bite out of Toyota’s advantage in the manufacturers’ championship, closing in to just 63 points behind the reigning champion.
“It has been a tough season so far, to get the victory finally after a very difficult weekend in Belgium it’s a release,” said Neuville.
“But I think the most important is we got a 1-2-3 finish for the team, after all those years we finally got it.”
Tänak struck a different tone when asked if team orders were correct.
“Depends what is the target,” he said.
“If you want to fight for the championship it was wrong but if you want to have good PR it was the right one. It depends what perspective you are looking from.”
Sordo was mostly a bystander in the political games – though he had also been given a team order that wasn’t carried out on Friday – but was delighted to have played his part in making history and securing his third third-place position from three starts this season.
“I’m happy we finished like this for the team, they really deserve it. They work really hard these days, we’ve had really bad moments at the beginning so the people in the factory deserve this and Hyundai also.”
The final classification suggests the Acropolis was dominated by Hyundai. Although it won every stage on Saturday and Sunday and locked out the podium, Friday belonged to M-Sport Ford.
Sébastien Loeb, making his first WRC start since Safari Rally Kenya, controlled the opening morning winning all three of the first gravel stages after Thursday night’s superspecial in the Olympic Stadium (won by Neuville).
But when he overshot a hairpin and had to reverse, that opened the door for Pierre-Louis Loubet to win his first-ever WRC stage and duly move into the lead. Loubet then doubled up on the following test before Loeb snuck ahead again to end Friday 1.9s ahead of his impressive compatriot.
However Loubet’s dreams of a maiden WRC podium were undone when he collected a front-left puncture and lost well over a minute, falling down to seventh before eventually recovering to fourth overall due to all the drama – a result that equals his career-best WRC finish from Rally Italy three months ago.
For the third rally in a row though, Loeb was let down by a mechanical failure. After just extending his lead to 19s on Saturday’s first stage, Loeb was quickly in trouble as his Puma Rally1’s engine died.
It turned out to be a broken alternator that had drained the battery and, while Loeb and co-driver Isabelle Galmiche tried everything they could to fix the part, they simply ran out of time to repair it and were forced to retire. They did not restart on Sunday.
M-Sport team-mate Gus Greensmith also suffered mechanical drama. He had kept himself out of trouble but retired on Saturday with some kind of engine problem. However, he went bold on the powerstage, opting to take no spare tires for the final stage which, despite being first Rally1 car onto the stage, ultimately paid off as Greensmith netted two bonus championship points.
Craig Breen suffered heartache when he was the only Rally1 driver to encounter any serious trouble on Friday, puncturing on the fourth special stage. That left him rather disillusioned, but Breen’s pace thereafter was strong and he recovered to finish fifth – a much-needed result after a bruising run of rallies.
“We can be quite pleased,” said Breen. “Our speed has been good, finally a rally from our side at least where we haven’t made any mistakes, it was much needed.”
Takamoto Katsuta’s streak of top 10 finishes lives on as he finished sixth in Greece. But it was a deeply frustrating event for the Toyota Next Generation driver, who struggled for any sort of confidence and therefore pace throughout the entire weekend – even calling it “dangerous” at times.
There was a final twist in the tale on the powerstage when Katsuta ran wide and dipped a rear-right wheel off the road – an impact that was hard enough to knock the tire off the rim.
“We had an issue before the stage and I completely lost concentration,” Katsuta explained.
“I was checking on the dash and I went a bit wide; my mistake. We had a messy weekend, sometimes s*** happens.”
Katsuta’s struggles typified Toyota’s event – by far its worst in terms of results this season.
Road position massively played against Rovanperä and he was then the architect of his own downfall with his Saturday mistake, but irrespective of that the 21-year-old was unhappy with how his GR Yaris Rally1 was behaving.
“I have done quite many rallies good and bad, and this is one of the worst,” said Rovanperä.
“Bad weekend for me and quite bad for the team also, we need to improve and be stronger next time.”
Esapekka Lappi looked like Toyota’s brightest hope, right in the thick of the podium fight before his Toyota suffered a fuel-related issue on Saturday’s penultimate stage. He had been second overall at the time.
The baton was then passed to Elfyn Evans who had quietly risen up the leaderboard due to problems for those around him. He started Sunday with a very real shot of challenging Sordo for the podium, lying just 7.1s behind, but never made it to the start of the first stage when he suddenly lost power on the road section and was forced to retire.
All of this meant the leading WRC2 runners filled out the final four positions of the overall top 10.
Emil Lindholm was utterly dominant, beating Toksport Škoda team-mate Nikolay Gryazin by XX.Xs. It was a timely result too as it massively boosted his WRC2 Junior title prospects.
Chris Ingram is his closest rival for that crown, but Ingram had a difficult Acropolis where first he crashed into a parked car and lost four minutes, and then rolled out for good – caught out by what he described as a “deceptive” car which sent him down a ravine.
There was late drama for Yohan Rossel though who had been on course to complete the WRC2 podium before clipping the inside of a tight hairpin and rolling his Citroën C3 Rally2 onto its side.
That paved the way clear for Alexandros Tsouloftas who denied Eyvind Brynildsen – a stand-in for the injured Marco Bulacia – a podium by just 2.9s.
It was a tricky weekend for Andreas Mikkelsen though as the end result could well deny him a second WRC2 title in succession.
Mikkelsen headed to the Acropolis knowing he realistically needed to win to keep his title hopes alive. With the best six scores from seven counting, his two consecutive DNFs due to engine problems in Portugal and Sardinia are massively damaging.
But within the first few seconds of the event, Mikkelsen had made his molehill a mountain as he went too fast over a jump on the stadium superspecial and collided with the barriers.
That contact damaged the front-left of his Fabia Rally2 evo, sending the front-left wheel massively out of alignment. He retired from the stage and instead focused on fighting back throughout the rally.
Mikkelsen eventually managed to climb back into the points, finishing seventh in WRC2. But that makes life a lot easier for chief title rival Kajetan Kajetanowicz who was absent in Acropolis but is expected to compete on the last three rounds of the championship in New Zealand, Spain and Japan.
