TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team driver Sébastien Ogier has closed to within 4.1 seconds of the lead of Acropolis Rally Greece ahead of the final day.
Saturday’s action took place on the Peloponnesian peninsula to the west of the Loutraki service park, on a mix of roads that were either brand-new or not used by WRC since 2013. The initial loop of four stages was the longest to be driven on a single set of tyres during this event, at 74.08 competitive kilometres, with two stages to then be repeated in rougher second-pass conditions after a mid-afternoon service halt.
Ogier began the day second overall, 9.7s behind the leader Thierry Neuville (Hyundai), and won the first and fourth stages of the loop as he reduced the gap to 3.7s arriving back in Loutraki for service. Neuville then added 7.1s to his advantage in the second pass of the Ghymno stage, only for Ogier to respond by taking 6.7s in the day’s closing run through Menalo Mt.
Takamoto Katsuta had a strong day to join Ogier in a podium position overnight, climbing from sixth to third with good consistent pace while staying out of trouble.
Championship leader Elfyn Evans was having a similarly strong day as he looked to recover some of the ground lost cleaning the road on Friday. Starting the day seventh, he got up to fifth and was closing on fourth when he had to stop and change a wheel and tyre in the day’s last stage, dropping to seventh once more.
Already delayed by a similar stop on Friday, Sami Pajari benefitted to move up into sixth position, 4.8s ahead of Evans. After retiring in Friday’s final stage, Oliver Solberg restarted and had a clean day, finishing it 21st overall.
TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto continued to set strong stage times within the competitive WRC2 field, moving up into 10th overall in the class.
Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“It has been a good Saturday for our team. It was another rough and abrasive day for the tyres, but Seb did a very good job once again. Neuville has been very fast too, so we should have a good fight to watch between them tomorrow. It’s been another really good performance from Taka to get up to third, and Elfyn could have been up there in the top four with him as well until they had to change the tyre, but that’s often how it goes on this rally. Tomorrow we’ll have Seb fighting for the win and others chasing Sunday points, and as a team we’ll try to take as many as we can.”Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“The day was going pretty well; we were enjoying the cleaner roads, we had a good rhythm and we were climbing up the leaderboard. Unfortunately in the last stage we picked up a puncture. It came quite suddenly after an impact and we had to stop and change it. It’s dropped us right back to where we started the day so we’ve got it all to do again tomorrow, and of course the road position will not be any easier either, but we’ll fight for what we can.”Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“I think it’s been a good day for us. In places these roads were nice to drive, and in others it was just about trying to survive the roughness. In this last stage I was planning to push, and then seeing how many others were having trouble in there made me more unsure, but we managed to have a decent rhythm and keep the fight open until tomorrow. I’m happy with what we’ve done so far but the most important day is coming, where we need to secure the best result and extra points are also available. I will keep the same approach and we’ll see what happens.”Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“After the disappointment of what happened yesterday, today was all about trying to find the feeling again and rebuild the confidence. Of course, it was going to be difficult to do anything special from the start position we had, but at least we could drive cleanly through the day. Tomorrow I’m sure there will still be a lot of road cleaning, but we will try our best and see if we can take a few points.”Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“This morning the first target was to catch the two cars in front of us and we did that in two stages. After that it was just about managing the high risk of punctures, and I think we did quite a good job to get through the day without any problems. It’s nice to be in third overall tonight but tomorrow’s stages are maybe even rougher than today, so anything can still happen and the main focus will be to finish without problems.”Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“I think there was not so much more that we could have done today. On some stages we had quite solid pace, on others maybe not, but I think this was mainly down to the conditions because our road position was not great after yesterday’s troubles. We were able to gain a few places after issues for other drivers, and that also makes our road position better, so I think that gives us a chance to try and take a few more points tomorrow.”
End of day three (Saturday):
1 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) 2h40m18.7s
2 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +4.1s
3 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +2m17.0s
4 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +3m00.6s
5 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +3m01.6s
6 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +4m38.3s
7 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +4m43.1s
8 Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +5m17.8s
9 Andreas Mikkelsen/Jørn Listerud (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +5m54.6s
10 Robert Virves/Jakko Viilo (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +6m08.5s
21 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +14m25.4s
(Results as of 20:20 on Saturday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
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