Sébastien Ogier decided to put the Hyundais under pressure, or at least try to. The eight-time WRC champion won the 20.95-kilometre Thiva Special Stage 8 of the Acropolis Rally, attempting to make up seconds on the i20 N Rally1s ahead of him in the event’s overall standings.
The Frenchman from Toyota won the stage with a 7.4″ advantage over the leader of the race, Dani Sordo, and 10.5″ over his rival for the world title, Thierry Neuville. Not much, though, too little to hope to recover the minute and a half that separates him from the Belgian and the minute and forty from Sordo.
The attempt, and it is obvious, is to hope to induce doubt in Hyundai, but with 7 tests to go, its gap from the two Alzenau drivers should allow the team led by Cyril Abiteboul to manage its margin without any problem until the end of tomorrow’s Power Stage.
All eyes are also on the internal battle at Hyundai. In this race, Dani Sordo did 3.1 seconds better than Thierry Neuville, extending his lead to 10.3 seconds over the Belgian in the overall standings of the Greek event.
However, we must always take into account the possibility of seeing the change of positions due to a team game that would make more sense than ever this time. It would bring Hyundai the same number of points, but it would give Neuville the chance to widen the gap on Sébastien Ogier in the general classification.
Ott Tanak, after having ruined 2 rims (and tires) in the previous test, was very cautious and will be so also in the next test: if he were to suffer another puncture or damage to a rim, he would be forced to retire as he would no longer have at least 4 tires in condition to allow him to continue the event.
Important step forward for Gregoire Munster, who goes from seventh to fifth place in the general classification in one fell swoop on a weekend where Adrien Fourmaux was forced to retire after breaking his steering arm yesterday.
Sami Pajari continues to lead the WRC2 standings in a very interesting head-to-head with Robert Virves. The two are separated by 9″7 in favor of the Finn, while Yohan Rossell succeeded in his intent, that is, returning to the podium zone after overtaking Fabrizio Zaldivar. The Frenchman is now third in class, but just over 50 seconds behind Pajari.
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