Acropolis Rally Greece triggered further concern from World Rally Championship drivers about the structure of event itineraries, with too many hours spent inside the car.
The topic first arose during Rally Portugal 2025, which featured a 15-hour leg on Friday with only a remote service, and a similarly long day on Saturday albeit with a proper service break.
For 2026, event organizers addressed this by shifting some of Friday’s stages to Thursday, which reduced the length of Friday’s itinerary to 12 hours.
The recent Acropolis Rally Greece, however, featured another marathon day: the first car checked out of parc fermé at 6.44 am but not due into final service until 9.30pm. Across the day, drivers tackled 67.5 miles of stages but drove 388.7 miles on the road section – meaning just 14.7% of the day’s mileage was competitive.
“We have so many days like this in the championship,” lamented championship leader Elfyn Evans.
“You know, we do less kilometers than a national rally and take double the time to do it. So it’s 14 hours or something in the car to do 100km, it’s crazy. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Evans says 600km road sections for 100km of stages doesn't make sense
This year’s Acropolis shifted base from Lamia to Loutraki for the first time since the event returned to the WRC calendar in 2021, and featured itinerary tweaks to match.
The crews took an overnight ferry from Korinthos to Itea on Thursday evening to reduce the road section on Friday morning, and there were also more first-pass stages than typical WRC events to combat stage deterioration.
Drivers recognized these positive points and praised the organizers and FIA for shortening SS12 Ghymno 2 to avoid a particularly rough section.
“[There was] a little bit too much road section,” world champion Sébastien Ogier told DirtFish. “That’s definitely something we need to… I mean, organizer, will need to improve, I would say.
“But generally, I think, there is a lot of positive as well with all of these first passes which you know definitely improved the roughness we had to go through because with more second passes it would have been even more difficult to survive. So I think that definitely helped.
“I think the boat actually was a bit of a different experience,” Ogier added. “I still felt a little bit dizzy in the morning when I went in the car, I was not 100% maybe for the first stage, but it saved us a bit of road section and we had already enough.”
However the general concern rests with spending too many unproductive hours inside the car, when they could be doing something more productive or entertaining instead. With current live TV demands, stages generally start at least 50 minutes after each other to ensure all Rally1 cars have completed the previous test before the next one commences.
But Takamoto Katsuta believes days as long as Saturday in Greece risk costing the WRC existing or new fans.
“For me these long days are the spirit of rally, but the generation has changed,” he explained. “Now we have to show the people, we have to communicate to more fans and more people – otherwise we’re losing the people watching this sport.
“Now it’s time to be more seriously thinking about how to show the people and how to get even closer to them. Because now, for example, Saturday we did 600km on the road section and only 100km of stages. We’re back in the service park at 10 o’clock in the evening. Then we have to go straight away without any signing. People are waiting for the autographs and photos.
“It’s so sad to go away because they are waiting so late in the evening, but we cannot do anything because we have to prepare [for the next day]. This is not right.
“I mean, OK, a long time ago, this maybe works no problem. But now, we have a serious issue that we’re losing the fans. I mean, we have to keep all of them and get new fans.
Katsuta fears drivers don't have enough time to spend with fans on WRC events
“So for me, it’s more important to do more PR stuff, show them the rally and even make it more of a show for people. Normally I don’t like superspecials so much, but [we need to] do more to show people. I think this is more important than keeping it like the old traditional stuff.”
Not every driver had an issue with the Acropolis itinerary however.
Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux said he was “OK with the itinerary” although he’d prefer no second-pass stages at all, while team-mate Thierry Neuville enjoyed the challenge.
“I like those events, those challenging events,” he said. “And even though I was very tired today [Sunday], it’s still enjoyable to be part of that experience and that adventure. I mean, when you’re a long time in this job, doing something new like the ferry and stuff is exciting.”
