TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team’s Sébastien Ogier moved up to third overall as he won three stages on another long and demanding day at Acropolis Rally Greece on Saturday.
As the route took them south away from the rally base in Lamia, crews faced a marathon 16 hours on the road in temperatures as high as 34 degrees centigrade with no opportunity for service all day: only a tyre-fitting zone in Loutraki punctuated a total of six stages which measured 116.23 competitive kilometres.
Having led until late on Friday’s attritional opening leg when he lost around two minutes due to a turbo issue, Ogier returned to full speed this morning. He moved up into third place after overnight leader Ott Tänak had to stop twice in SS7 to change wheels and tyres, and would go to be comfortably quickest in the following two tests before arriving in Loutraki. During the afternoon he would go fastest for the second time through Aghii Theodori – the day’s only repeated stage – as he closed to within 27.2s of second place, and 1m20.9s from the lead.
After losing around nine minutes on Friday, Elfyn Evans was climbing the leaderboard before a slow-speed roll in a hairpin on SS11. Although he was able to complete the stage, significant damage had been done to the front of the car, leading to the decision to retire from the day. The team will use the permitted four-hour service time to repair the car and prepare it to restart tomorrow.
Takamoto Katsuta’s car was fixed following his incident on Friday and he safely completed the day, running first on the road with slippery loose conditions.
Sami Pajari leads WRC2 in fifth place overall in his GR Yaris Rally2 car run by Printsport, with an advantage of 27.7s over his nearest rival.
Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“Once again it has been an eventful day like we could maybe expect. After yesterday, today has been a lot more promising for us: with Seb now in third, we are on to score at least some good points. Elfyn unfortunately had this slow-speed roll near the end of the day, but it hasn’t affected things too much and hopefully we can get the car fixed fully for tomorrow. Now we have the opportunity to fight for the Super Sunday win and in the Power Stage, and at the same time nothing is decided overall yet. Many drivers will want to go for the extra points but the risk level is very high, so it’s a challenge for them because they need to push hard but not go over the limit in these rough conditions.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It was not an easy day to really push to the maximum after the difficulties of yesterday, but it was an opportunity to keep working through a few things with our car setup for this kind of condition and we were able to find some answers at least. Then, in the last proper stage this afternoon, we just clipped a rut in a tight hairpin. The car went over quite slowly but the damage was obvious. We did try to make some repairs and continue but the team made the call to retire, as it’s important to get everything right for tomorrow.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“I think we did a good day today. There was nothing else we could do. We knew it would be a difficult day so we can be pleased that we got through without trouble. The gaps were quite big so we just focused on ourselves and tried to do our job. It’s been a challenging weekend for everyone and with tomorrow to come, it’s far from over. It’s a very important day for both championships but the last stage that we drive twice is maybe the roughest we saw during recce, so it will be interesting to see what happens.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It was good to be back in the car today; thank you to the team for fixing it. It was an extremely hot day and at the same time, the amount of road cleaning was much more than I expected. This made it very hard to compare my pace to the others, so I just tried to focus on my job and what I could do. I tried to find a good feeling for tomorrow and I will do my best. The stages are still very rough but let’s see how it goes.”
End of day two (Saturday):
1 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) 3h01m5.3s
2 Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +53.7s
3 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +1m20.9s
4 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +3m19.2s
5 Sami Pajari/Enni Mälkönen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +5m06.1s
6 Robert Virves/Aleks Lesk (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +5m33.8s
7 Yohan Rossel/Florian Barral (Citroën C3 Rally2) +6m00.3s
8 Kajetan Kajetanowicz/Maciej Szczepaniak (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +6m58.1s
9 Georg Linnamäe/James Morgan (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +8m33.9s
10 Fabrizio Zaldivar/Marcelo Der Ohannesian (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +9m23.2s
25 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +24m45.8s
40 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +40m59.0s
(Results as of 00:20 on Sunday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What's next?
Three stages conclude the event on Sunday, totalling 54.05 competitive kilometres. The all-new Inohori stage is followed by the more familiar Eleftherohori test – which will then be repeated (after a short final service) as the rally-ending Power Stage.
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Rd.10 Acropolis Rally Greece
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