Ott Tänak has taken the lead of Acropolis Rally Greece away from Sébastien Ogier, who lost several seconds with an apparent technical issue that he’s now fixing roadside.
All seemed well aboard the the lead Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 until the final split of stage five, when Ogier suddenly lost almost 10 seconds in under two miles in the final section of Dafni.
In a hurried stage end comment, Ogier quickly remarked: “We have to check something, I don’t know.”
After reaching the refuel zone between stages five and six, Ogier then began to tinker under the hood of his Yaris, working on a similar area of the car as team-mate Elfyn Evans had when he had suffered a turbo failure earlier on Friday morning.
When asked by DirtFish what was amiss with his car, Ogier simply replied: “I don’t know.”
Ogier has fallen to second place, five seconds behind Ott Tänak and with 17.5s in hand over third-placed Dani Sordo.
Evans is back up to speed after the technical issues that beset his Friday morning loop, losing almost seven minutes on stages where his turbocharger had stopped working.
While Evans had changed the faulty turbo, Toyota had elected not to do the same as a precaution on Ogier’s car at midday service.
Ogier and co-driver Vincent Landais attempted roadside repairs – but it remains unclear how effective they were
“It’s that this is very rare that things like that happen. But unfortunately, yes, sometimes it’s possible to happen,” said team principal Jari-Matti Latvala, confirming that they had elected not to replace the same part on Ogier’s car that had failed on Evans’ machine.
Though Sordo would be next in line to benefit from any Ogier strife, he has no intention of throwing caution to the wind.
“Like I said before if you take a picture of the positions we have now, I think it’s really nice for Hyundai,” he pointed out.
“It’s not the time to make a stupid mistake. You need to be there. But you have no Toyotas, no Fords, and three Hyundais in 2-3-4, so you need to be clever,” he added before noticing Tänak had taken the lead from Ogier.
Grégoire Munster has finally climbed past WRC2 leader Yohan Rossel for fifth place overall, noting that a setup change at midday service had transformed the feeling aboard his Ford Puma on the afternoon loop.
