LAMIA: Estonian driver Ott Tanak led a Hyundai 1-2-3 on the first full day of the Acropolis Rally, the tenth event in the World Rally Championship, taking a 21.8 second lead over Dani Sordo on Friday. World championship leader Thierry Neuville was third 45.2sec behind Tanak with Sebastien Ogier slipping to fourth in his Toyota over two minutes back after turbo trouble late in the day. “We need to be very grateful for a trouble-free day,” said 2019 world champion Tanak after a day when temperatures passed 36 degrees Celsius. “It has been very difficult with the temperature and the roughness. It’s been a good day but we all know what’s coming.”

As championship leader, Neuville had the awkward task of opening the dusty, rocky route on the first stage and lost 10sec to Ogier. But the Belgian battled back well enough to win stage six, albeit by only 0.7sec ahead of Sordo. “It was okay. The roughest stage of the day was the last one,” said Neuville. “Very challenging day, we did what we could with our position. We have seen a lot of problems for everyone so it could have gone much worse for us. With the position we are in, we are good.”

Ogier was leading the race after winning three of the first four stages. But the eight-time world champion hit mechanical problems on stage five which led to him crawling through the day’s final stage. “There was not much we could do. The turbo is broken. That is motorsport sometimes. It’s not the day we were after.” Welshman Elfyn Evans (Toyota) was another to have a nightmare day, effectively kissing goodbye to his title hopes as he closed the day almost 10 minutes down. Another six tough stages follow on Saturday with 141 kilometers of testing Greek roads. — AFP