TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team driver Sébastien Ogier sits second overall and within 10 seconds of the lead after a demanding first full day of Acropolis Rally Greece.
Following Thursday evening’s opening super special in Athens, cars and crews were transported by sea ferry through the Gulf of Corinth to Itea to begin what would be the longest day of the rally. A total of six stages were run through central Greece forming 129.22 competitive kilometres, and with only a remote service in the middle of the day in Livadia.
With the five GR YARIS Rally1 drivers running in the first five positions on the road courtesy of their championship positions, they faced a challenging day on the loose and rocky stages, sweeping a cleaner line for their rivals to follow.
Ogier had the best position of the team’s drivers in fifth on the road and made the most of it with a strong performance through the day, achieving a stage win in SS4 and coming close to more, and ending the day just 9.7s from the leader Thierry Neuville (Hyundai).
For the team’s other drivers it was a more challenging day. Takamoto Katsuta and Elfyn Evans sit sixth and seventh overall after facing the toughest conditions running second and first on the road respectively.
Oliver Solberg was running just behind them and third on the road, but conceded over a minute in the day’s first stage after a loss of tyre pressure. Worse was to come in the day’s final stage when he ran wide and got stuck on a bank. Unable to return to the road, he was forced to retire from the day. With the car mostly undamaged, he is set to restart tomorrow.
Sami Pajari ran as high as fourth overall during the morning but had to stop briefly in SS4 due to a technical issue and then for almost two minutes in SS5 while he changed a wheel and tyre, and now occupies 10th overall.
TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto has shown strong pace in a competitive WRC2 class, setting several top six stage times, but he also twice stopped to change a tyre, leaving him 13th in class and over six minutes adrift. Alejandro Cachón runs third in the class in his GR Yaris Rally2 car.
Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“Today was probably just as difficult for us as we had expected beforehand. Seb has been doing well, making the most of the slightly better position he had compared to his team-mates, and he’s in a good position looking ahead to the rest of the rally. Elfyn knows how to drive as the first car on the road and he made no mistakes, so it just shows how extreme the cleaning effect was today. Taka was also doing good times from second on the road and Sami was going well too until he lost some time with some issues. The mistake from Oliver is unfortunate; these things can happen when you’re trying to drive more carefully, so we need to help him find the right balance.”Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“We knew that today was going to be tough in our position opening the road but it turned out to be even tougher than we had expected. The cleaning effect on some of the stages today was really extreme. It’s very dry this year and we’ve started the rally with some rockier and more abrasive stages compared to last year, and the impact of that for us has been clear. We just have to keep trying tomorrow, which I’m sure will be another tough day to challenge everyone.”Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“It was clear that today would be difficult as a team with the amount of loose gravel on the road. At least I had the best start position within the team and I tried to use that as much as I could. In some sections we still saw the guys starting behind us could be quite a bit quicker, but overall I think we can be happy. We had a good rhythm and stayed out of trouble on stages that were very abrasive for the tyres. So far it’s going to plan, but we need to keep it going the same way.”Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“Today has been tougher than expected. To have the puncture in the first stage this morning was unfortunate, and after that we were just trying to stay out of trouble really. Then in the last stage of the day I got too wide in a right-hander and just got beached on the edge of the road, and when I tried to reverse I damaged the gearbox and ended up being stuck. It’s very frustrating, especially as we had not been pushing after what happened earlier. It’s been a tough run lately and we need to understand it and improve and keep our heads up.”Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s been quite a clean day overall for us. We tried our best to manage the tyres, and unfortunately we did pick up some damage a couple of times, but we know that this can happen in this kind of very extreme conditions. To be P6 overall tonight is quite good considering that we were second on the road. Of course, it could be better, but it could also be worse. Realistically I think we can still aim to catch the two cars in front of us tomorrow and otherwise try to stay away from problems, because anything can still happen in a rough rally like this.”Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“We had some nice stages during the morning loop and I think that our pace was quite decent considering our road position. I felt that we were doing quite an OK job while trying to avoid any issues, but unfortunately the issues still came our way and in total we lost around two minutes. It means we are realistically out of the fight for the win, but there’s still two long days to go. Anything can happen and we just need to keep going.”
End of day one (Thursday):
1 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) 1h26m48.2s
2 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +9.7s
3 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +42.4s
4 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +1m10.1s
5 Mārtiņš Sesks/Renārs Francis (Ford Puma Rally1) +1m16.9s
6 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m33.2s
7 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +2m08.4s
8 Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +2m49.5s
9 Andreas Mikkelsen/Jørn Listerud (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +3m10.6s
10 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +3m13.1s
29 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +12m36.6s
(Results as of 20:00 on Friday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
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