World champion Sébastien Ogier established an early lead of Acropolis Rally Greece after Thursday evening’s superspecial stage
While it shares the same name as past events, this year’s EKO SSS is entirely new; now a side-by-side superspecial held in the south suburbs of Athens.
That pitched Rally1 drivers head-to-head with one another, with 2025 champion Ogier racing alongside 2024 champion Thierry Neuville.
Ogier was quicker than Neuville and fastest of all on the 0.96-mile test, besting second-fastest Takamoto Katsuta by a single second.
Neuville was 1.1s off the pace, with Toyota team-mates Sami Pajari and Oliver Solberg both dropping 1.2s to the early leader.
“Obviously the real start is tomorrow, I think you’ve all heard that before,” said Ogier, “but being in Greece is such a pleasure. It’s such an historical rally, we know how tough a challenge is waiting for us but that’s always the case for us. Luck will play a big role in the result, but we feel ready.”
Neuville, who was fastest on Thursday morning’s shakedown and will start Friday’s stages seventh on the road, commented: “It’s great to kick off another gravel rally and having a good feeling in the car, but we don’t need to be overoptimistic, as it’s a long rally and a lot of things can happen. We’ll just try to enjoy it, drive our own pace and see where we end up.”
Pajari meanwhile has his eyes on a maiden WRC victory this weekend: “Today was a long day for a short driving but it’s always worth it when you see the crowd cheering so nicely. We need to do the best we can and hopefully we are lucky enough to win the rally.”
Pajari defeated Mãrtiņš Sesks in his head-to-head; the Latvian posting the 13th fastest time ahead of M-Sport team-mate Josh McErlean who raced Adrien Fourmaux.
Fourmaux is seventh, one place behind championship leader Elfyn Evans who was beaten by Katsuta in their head-to-head.
Dani Sordo (+2.5s), Jon Armstrong (+2.8s) and fastest WRC2 driver Yohan Rossel completed the overnight top 10. Armstrong was up against Solberg while Sordo drove side-by-side with fellow Spaniard Alejandro Cachón’s Rally2 Toyota.
