Reigning world rally champion Sébastien Ogier claimed an early lead at Acropolis Rally Greece after winning the opening super special stage on Thursday night.
A brand new head-to-head super special stage held on asphalt in the Greek capital city Athens kicked off the rally, famous for its attritional rough gravel stages.
Nine-time world champion Ogier found himself against 2024 world champion Thierry Neuville in a duel, which was claimed by the former by 1.1s.
Ogier’s Toyota team-mate Takamoto Katsuta came the closest to eclipsing the effort as the Japanese driver defeated championship leader Elfyn Evans in his heat, stopping the clocks a second slower than Ogier’s benchmark.
“Obviously the real start is tomorrow, I think you’ve all heard that before,” said Ogier.
“But being in Greece is such a pleasure. It’s such an historical rally, we know how tough a challenge is waiting for us but that’s always the case for us. Luck will play a big role in the result, but we feel ready.”
Neuville’s time in his heat defeat to Ogier was enough to put the Hyundai driver into third overall, heading into Friday’s six gravel stages with the advantage of being seventh on the road.
“It’s great to kick off another gravel rally and having a good feeling in the car, but we don’t need to be overoptimistic, as it’s a long rally and a lot of things can happen. We’ll just try to enjoy it, drive our own pace and see where we end up,” said Neuville, who topped Thursday morning’s shakedown.
WRC leaderboard after Thursday
Following Ogier, Toyota team-mates Oliver Solberg and Sami Pajari posted identical times, 1.2s shy of their teammate in respective heats. Pajari beat M-Sport-Ford’s Mārtiņš Sesks in his head-to-head while Solberg defeated M-Sport’s Jon Armstrong.
Evans’ effort was good enough for the sixth fastest time as he prepared for what will be tough Friday opening the roads, with five of the six tests, first pass only stages.
“Clearly it’s gonna be a tough weekend. It’s gonna be rocky and quite rough. It will be difficult to find that balance, like usual, between being fast and looking after the car and the tyres, but that’s gonna be the name of the game,” said Evans.
Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux was 0.5s slower than Evans in seventh, while the top 10 was rounded out by Hyundai’s Dani Sordo, M-Sport’s Armstrong and top WRC2 runner Yohan Rossel.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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