2026 WRC Round 8, Acropolis Rally Greece: Neuville leads on Friday as Solberg retires on final stage

Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe led the Acropolis Rally Greece after Friday’s six gravel stages with a total time of 1h26m48.2s, 9.7s ahead of Ogier, with Fourmaux third, 42.4s behind. The tiny gaps from Thursday’s urban super special stage quickly grew over 129.22 kilometres of mountain roads in central Greece. McErlean was fourth in his Ford, with Sesks fifth. Toyota’s sweep of the top four places in Japan has not carried over to Greece, where the rally has already become a closely fought contest between Hyundai and Ogier.

Between the end of the opening stage in Athens and Friday’s mountain stages, the cars and crews travelled by ferry across the Gulf of Corinth to Itea. This was the day with the rally’s longest competitive distance, with only a remote service in Livadeia at midday. The loose gravel surface and sharp rocks meant the early runners had to sweep the road for those behind. Toyota’s five cars occupied the first five positions in the starting order because of their championship standings, with first-on-the-road Evans facing the toughest surface to clear. Any car or tyre trouble before remote service would make either pressing on or stopping to change a wheel more costly.

Ogier was the last of the Toyota drivers in the running order and used his relatively favourable fifth position on the road to claim a stage win on SS4. He went from the provisional lead on Thursday to second on Friday, but kept his deficit to Neuville below 10 seconds. Takamoto Katsuta, running second on the road, finished the day sixth, while road-opener Evans was seventh, 2m08.4s behind the leader. Neither made a major driving error, but both struggled to overcome the disadvantage of sweeping the road near the front of the field. That is also the biggest difference between the road conditions in Greece and the asphalt rally in Japan.

Solberg first suffered a loss of tyre pressure early in the day, costing him more than a minute. On Friday’s final stage, he ran too wide at a right-hand bend and became stranded at the roadside. He then damaged the gearbox while trying to reverse out and was unable to complete the day. The team judged that the main structure of the car had sustained only minor damage and planned to repair it for a return on Saturday. The classification assigned him a provisional time under the restart regulations, but that figure includes the prescribed time added for an uncompleted stage, rather than his actual accumulated time for completing all six Friday stages. For a driver who had hoped to use Greece’s gravel roads to turn around his recent setbacks on asphalt, this retirement has already changed his objectives for the rally.

Pajari briefly climbed to fourth in the morning, but stopped momentarily with a technical problem on SS4, then changed a tyre and wheel on SS5. He lost around two minutes in total and ultimately dropped to 10th overall. Although Fourmaux was 42.4s behind Neuville, he still gave Hyundai two cars in podium positions. Sordo was eighth and also faced challenges managing his tyres and the road conditions. For Ford, McErlean and Sesks were fourth and fifth ahead of two Toyota drivers, showing that no single manufacturer controlled the day’s gravel stages. Armstrong lost considerably more time but remained among the classified runners.

Saturday’s action moves to the Peloponnese peninsula west of Loutraki, with six stages totalling 108.69 kilometres. Two of the four morning stages are completely new, while the other two have not been used in the WRC since 2013. Two of those stages will be repeated in the afternoon. Neuville leads Ogier by just 9.7s, and tyre damage on the rocky roads could wipe out that advantage in a single stage. Ogier, too, must avoid clipping sharp roadside rocks in his pursuit of those seconds. Katsuta and Evans will need to take advantage of the road conditions following changes to the starting order to work their way back towards the podium.

WRC2 competitors Mikkelsen, Cachón and Yuki Yamamoto are also contesting the event, but their Rally2 cars are not part of the Rally1 classification. An overall classification combining the categories can push some top-class crews outside the top 10, so Solberg, Armstrong and Serderidis must not be omitted on that basis. Friday’s clearest contrast was that Neuville put Hyundai out front and Ogier stayed within striking distance of victory, while Toyota’s other four cars were slowed by road sweeping, tyre trouble and an accident.

Rally1 cumulative standings after Friday’s stages