Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville moved a step closer to claiming his first FIA World Rally Championship title after winning a grueling and twist-filled Acropolis Rally Greece.
The Belgian (above) mastered the rough, rock-strewn, all-gravel stages around Lamia to head up a Hyundai Motorsport 1-2-3 finish, ahead of i20 N Rally1 teammates Dani Sordo and Ott Tanak, with Neuville’s main title rival Sebastien Ogier suffering a dramatic roll on the rally-closing Wolf Power Stage while on course to finish second overall.
Ogier was able to push his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 back onto its wheels and finish the rally, the eight-time WRC champ crucially securing the 15 points scored on Saturday night, but he plummeted down the overall rally standings after dropping more than 20 minutes.
Frenchman Ogier had led early in the three-day rally, but slipped behind when his car was crippled by a turbocharger failure late on Friday’s opening leg. Tanak and Sordo also lost valuable time, both suffering tire damage on Saturday that dashed their own victory hopes and catapulted Neuville into the lead.
Even Neuville and co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe weren’t totally immune to the rally’s brutality. A misfiring engine plagued their Hyundai on the opening morning, but the pair managed to regroup and adopted a sensible strategy, carefully balancing risk and reward to avoid further calamities on the treacherous road surfaces.
His Greek victory stretched Neuville’s lead in the WRC drivers’ standings to 34 points over Ogier, with Tanak two more points back in third. But with 90 points still available from the remaining three rounds, and Ogier switching from a part-time campaign to a full-on attack on a ninth title, it’s still far from over. In the WRC’s manufacturers’ championship, Hyundai extended its advantage over Toyota Gazoo Racing to 35 points.
“I didn’t have the information on Ogier’s crash at all, and when I saw the car I still wasn’t sure it was him,” said Neuville. “I understood from that point on that I just had to bring home the car and get through.
“Since yesterday morning we understood that we had to get through and to follow our objectives. I’m really proud of my team as well, and Martijn, too — we got the car to the end and that’s what matters.”
With Ogier in trouble, Tanak collected 11 of a possible 12 points from Super Sunday. The 2019 WRC champ also claimed his 50th WRC podium.
Elfyn Evans’ title aspirations took a major hit when he rolled his Toyota late on Saturday, while M-Sport Ford duo Adrien Fourmaux and Grégoire Munster were also forced to rejoin under restart rules following their own incidents on Friday and Saturday resectively. For Fourmaux, there was small consolation in taking fastest time on the bonus points-paying Wolf Power Stage, but the Puma Rally1 driver’s chances of earning a top-three finish in the final WRC standings now seem remote.
In WRC2, the second tier of international rallying, Sami Pajari clinched the class victory in the closest way possible, the Finnish rising star relying on countback rules after completing the event level on time with Robert Virves.
Pajari, driving a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, appeared to have his third WRC2 win of the season in the bag as he headed into the closing Wolf Power Stage with a near 30-second advantage over Estonian Virves’ Skoda Fabia RS. But in true Acropolis Rally style, drama unfolded at the very last moment.
A deflating front-left tire three miles from the finish line left Pajari rapidly losing time. By the time he crossed the stage end, Virves had clawed back the gap, leaving both drivers deadlocked on total overall time.
As per the WRC regulations, the tiebreaker was determined by the fastest time on the rally’s opening stage — a decisive advantage for Pajari, who’d been 19.7s quicker on Friday morning’s 13.96-mile Ano Pavliani test.
“About five kilometers (three miles) from the finish, I realized we had a puncture, and I knew the best option was to keep going rather than stop to change it,” explained a shocked Pajari. “When we crossed the line, I looked around to see if anyone knew the result, but nobody seemed to know. It took a few minutes to find out that we had won, and it was a huge relief.”
He now trails WRC2 championship leader Oliver Solberg, who skipped the Acropolis Rally as one of his seven points-counting events, by just three markers.
The WRC now heads across the Atlantic to South America for round 11 at Rally Chile, Sept. 26-29. The Concepcion-based event, which features breathtaking, all-gravel mountain stages, will be crucial to Ogier’s continuing chase of Neuville in the WRC’s overall title battle.
WRC Rally Acropolis Greece, final positions after Leg Three, SS15
1 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) 3h38m04.2s
2 Dani Sordo/Candido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1m36.8s
3 Ott Tanak/Martin Jarveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +2m57.3s
4 Sami Pajari/Enni Malkonen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 – WRC2 winner) +7m01.1s
5 Robert Virves/Aleks Lesk (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +7m01.1s
6 Yohan Rossel/Florian Barral (Citroen C3 – WRC2) +7m31.9s
7 Kajetan Kajetanowicz/Maciej Szczepaniak (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +9m54.0s
8 Fabrizio Zaldivar/Marcelo der Ohannesian (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +11m27.9s
9 Josh McErlean/James Fulton (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +12m27.2s
10 Robert Dapra/Luca Guglielmetti (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +13m44.9s
WRC Drivers’ Championship after 10 of 13 rounds
1 Neuville 192 points
2 Sebastien Ogier 158
3 Tanak 154
4 Elfyn Evans 140
5 Adrien Fourmaux 130
WRC Manufacturers’ Championship after 10 of 13 rounds
1 Hyundai Motorsport 445 points
2 Toyota Gazoo Racing 410
3 M-Sport Ford 226
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