Ott Tänak has fallen from the lead of Acropolis Rally Greece after stopping to change wheels twice on the Rengini stage, promoting Hyundai team-mate Dani Sordo to the top spot.
The erstwhile rally leader managed only 3.5 miles of Saturday’s action before needing to pull over and change the right rear wheel, which had come off the rim.
Tänak’s first wheel change was a rapid 1m21s, meaning he’d still have kept a podium place. But he then ran into trouble again further down the road, this time a bent rim deflating the front right tire and forcing another change.
That promoted Sordo to the lead, though Hyundai’s third driver had mixed emotions of being at the head of the field.
“OK, It’s nice to be leader but I don’t like these kind of things,” he said. “I need to win in the stages not because others have problems.”
Championship leader Thierry Neuville was a whopping 16.2s faster than Sordo, narrowing the overall gap to just 7.2s – and Sordo indicated he wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to keep his team-mate behind.
“I didn’t take any risks, I’m just driving,” said Sordo. “I will continue with my target. It will be nice to win but you need to push more to win and take risks. But it’s nice.”
Sébastien Ogier was 0.2s slower than Neuville, so while he has gained third position from Tänak’s troubles, the Toyota driver’s gap to his title rival is still a whopping 1m41.4s.
Sami Pajari has taken fifth place overall and the lead of WRC2 from Robert Virves, though whether either will receive an adjusted time later remains unclear as both were affected by Tänak’s stoppages.
Virves led WRC2 overnight and so followed Tänak’s dust after the Hyundai’s first stoppage, then passed him during the second tire change. But after that second stoppage it was then Pajari’s turn to be stuck in Tänak’s dust.
Just before Tänak’s second stoppage Pajari had been 23.8s up on Virves, then fell back to 13.6s advantage over the Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 driver by the finish.
“The dust was quite heavy,” said Virves. “But OK, for him it looks even worse. Nothing you can do in this situation.”
Pajari followed Tänak into the finish control: ”Honestly we had a really big dust as well, I thought we would be like half a minute behind, that was my feeling. I was for sure not expecting a fast time.”
Takamoto Katsuta and Adrien Fourmaux both restarted after their Friday retirements but are well down the order. Elfyn Evans remains five minutes away from the points-scoring positions after his turbo issues on Friday.
