Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe head into the final day of Acropolis Rally Greece with just 4.1 seconds in hand over Sebastien Ogier and Vincent Landais after a day of hard, brutal racing where ambient temperatures reached 33ºC.
Ogier started the day with a win on SS8, and finished second on stage nine, beating Neuville who was third quickest to cut the leader’s margin to 4.9sec.
Neuville struck back on stage ten, Ogier took SS11 and Neuville won SS12, taking his overall lead back to 10.8 sec.
Ogier won the final stage by 6.7 seconds but there was drama for Neuville who clipped a bank close to the end of the final stage of the day. Damage appeared to be superficial, but liquid was dripping out from under his Hyundai; the Belgian still had 100km to go to get back to service in Loutraki. Neuville made it back to service and confirmed the liquid bleeding out of his i20 was power steering fluid.
Ogier hadn’t been flat out though: “Still I didn’t go full risk because of the punctures. I had a clean drive but couldn’t really push so hard because of the people in front having the punctures.”
Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston hauled their way up the order, taking Martins Sesks in the day’s opening stage and Josh McErlean on the following test and held third in the provisional standings after Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria suffered a puncture in stage 12, which cost the Hyundai pair over two minutes.
Fourmaux, who won stage nine and survived a high-speed moment in stage 11, was back into fourth by the close of play, followed by Josh McERlean and Eoin Treacy in their Ford Puma after great drive. The Irish youngster withstood huge pressure from the fast-closing Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin with the gap between the two teams down to four seconds with one stage remaining.
Evans’ luck ran out in the final test, stopping to change a flat tyre in the stage which undid all his hard work, dropping to seventh overall. “It happens; it came very unexpectedly. The deflation was very sudden, and I was very close to a crash as I couldn’t stop at the next corner,” he explained.
Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen spent the day trying to catch Dani Sordo and Candido Carrera; the Spanish Hyundai pair had a puncture in the final stage but elected to continue, and only dropped a minute which was enough for Pajari to move up one place in the ranking to sixth.
Evans was seventh ahead of Sordo in eighth, with the two leading WRC2 runners, Andreas Mikkelson and Robert Virves rounding out the top ten.
Sunday is described as the roughest of the rally. Four stages, but 80-odd km to go…
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