Toyota driver Sébastien Ogier heads Acropolis Rally Greece halfway through Friday’s opening day, with erstwhile leader Thierry Neuville losing 40 seconds to a puncture.
Ott Tänak and Ogier shared the lead after the opening super special stage in the center of Athens on Thursday evening, but the real action lay in wait across Friday, Saturday and Sunday up in the Greek mountains.
And crews were spared no respite as the longest stage of the rally, Aghii Theodori, was up first – and immediately spelt trouble for Takamoto Katsuta, Josh McErlean and Mãrtiņš Sesks who all picked up punctures.
Despite running second on the road, Ogier set the quickest time to move into the overall lead ahead of world champion Neuville and Sami Pajari, who had looked likely to head a WRC event for the first time before eventually dropping 0.7s to Ogier.
The far shorter Loutraki stage however belonged to Hyundai, as Adrien Fourmaux – who was compromised on SS2 by hanging dust left by Katsuta who had stopped to change his wheel – blitzed the test to win it by 4.9s.
Neuville moved into the lead, but knew it was effectively meaningless.
“It’s always good to have a good stage, but the rally is so long,” he smiled.
His words would prove prophetic on the repeat pass of Aghii Theodori, as Neuville had been setting the pace but picked up a front-left puncture and dropped back to sixth place.
“It’s hard to know what happened,” Neuville said. “Obviously lots of stones, but like I said the rally is still long, there will be much more punctures throughout the weekend.
“Unfortunate for us, but we took the right decision to carry on – we lost 40s and that’s not the end of the rally.”
Neuville’s loss was Ogier’s gain, as he won Aghii Theodori for the second time to establish a 6.1s advantage over Tänak.
Fourmaux was careful on SS4 as he chose to “manage my car” – ending the loop 14.4s shy of the lead. Sami Pajari (+27.5s) and Kalle Rovanperä (+32.4s) complete the top five with Neuville 34.5s adrift.
First on the road Elfyn Evans kept himself out of trouble and is 42.5s off the lead, 27.9s ahead of Grégoire Munster who took a cautious approach but still punctured on SS4.
“I’m thinking long term,” the M-Sport driver said after SS2. “I think it’s going to be a really challenging rally for everyone, so I keep that in mind.”
McErlean picked up his second puncture of the weekend on SS4, leaving him comfortably last of the Rally1 cars – three minutes off the lead.
Sesks and Katsuta are a minute up the road but split by just 0.9s in the M-Sport man’s favor.
Oliver Solberg leads WRC2 by a comfortable 42.7s over Kajetan Kajetanowicz. Yohan Rossel is another minute behind after picking up two punctures across the morning.
