2026 WRC Round 8, Acropolis Rally Greece, Sunday stages: Ogier comes from behind to win as post-rally penalties reshuffle fourth to seventh

Sébastien Ogier and Vincent Landais won the 2026 Acropolis Rally Greece with an official total time of 3h 36m 40.7s, finishing 58.3s ahead of Neuville. Takamoto Katsuta took third, 3m 04.8s behind. Ogier had still trailed Neuville by 4.1s at the end of Saturday, but went fastest on Sunday’s opening stage to take the lead. He then capitalised on his rival’s tyre damage on the penultimate stage to extend the gap, before winning the Power Stage as well. The battle for victory and the post-rally classification decisions need to be considered separately: positions fourth to seventh were reshuffled after the finish by time penalties for safety harness infringements.

Ogier did not hold the advantage in Greece from start to finish. He won Thursday’s opening city super special stage in Athens, but trailed Neuville by 9.7s after Friday’s long gravel stages; on Saturday, he cut the deficit to 4.1s. On the final day, he had both the overall rally lead to chase and extra points available from the Power Stage and Super Sunday. Going fastest on the opening stage put him at the top of the standings, and the two drivers shared the fastest time on the next stage. The contest was still far from settled until the tyre issue on the penultimate stage changed the gap between them.

Neuville led throughout Friday and Saturday, maintaining a competitive pace in the heat, on gravel and through constantly changing stage conditions. On Sunday’s penultimate stage, tyre damage caused his deficit to balloon to 54.8s; Ogier then made the final margin 58.3s on the closing stage. For Hyundai, this was not an event spent trailing from the outset: Neuville had taken the fight for victory into the final day, and second place still brought important points. The decisive factor in losing the win was Sunday’s tyre incident, not Thursday’s short super special stage, where the difference had been just 1.1s.

Katsuta steadily climbed from sixth on Friday to the podium, with no major problem altering his position during the Greek event. He returned to the podium after finishing fourth on home soil in Japan, cutting his championship deficit to Evans to seven points. Evans ran first on the road and swept the stages on Friday, suffered a puncture on Saturday’s final stage and then had a slow puncture on Sunday, leaving him fifth in the final results. Pajari recovered from the time lost changing a wheel on Friday to move up to fourth overall. Toyota took the victory and placed two drivers in the top three, but the different paths taken by its crews showed how unevenly this rally punished tyre problems and road position.

Immediately after the rally, McErlean had reached the finish in fourth, while Fourmaux was provisionally sixth. Officials subsequently ruled that both crews had failed to fasten their safety harnesses correctly during stages and added a one-minute penalty to each crew’s time: Fourmaux dropped to seventh for an infringement on SS12, while McErlean fell from fourth to sixth for an infringement on SS16. As a result, Pajari moved up to an official fourth place and Evans to fifth. These decisions form part of the rally’s final classification; the provisional post-finish standings can no longer be treated as the final results. Although McErlean lost fourth place, he still recorded a classified finish among the leading Rally1 runners.

Sesks’ official time also included an earlier 3m 10s penalty, and he finished eighth. Solberg returned after retiring on Friday and completed the rally, placing 16th overall and ninth in Rally1. Armstrong was 20th overall and tenth in Rally1, while Serderidis finished 32nd overall and 11th in Rally1. Sordo retired before the closing Power Stage and had no final classification, but must still be included when accounting for the top-class crews that contested this event. Only by listing the finishers, returning drivers and retirements together can the complete outcome for all 12 Rally1 cars in Greece be seen.

Ogier also won the Sunday and Power Stage classifications, scoring 35 points at this event. This was his 69th WRC victory and his second win in Greece, following his 2011 success. Evans continues to lead the drivers’ championship with 158 points, followed by Katsuta on 151 and Ogier on 125. The next round in Estonia is also on gravel, but features faster roads and a softer surface. The most important lesson to take from Greece is that road position, tyres and post-rally decisions can all affect the results of the same event, so the order at the finish is not necessarily the final classification.

Final Rally1 results in Greece