Hyundai’s Ott Tanak has regained the Acropolis Rally lead while Adrien Fourmaux’s pursuit of a maiden World Rally Championship victory has come to a halt.
Tanak moved into a five-second rally lead when he took advantage of a mysterious issue for rally leader Sebastien Ogier’s Toyota GR Yaris on stage five.
Ogier had been running strongly before dropping time in the final split of the 21.67km Dafni test.
The eight-time world champion reported at the stage end that there was an issue with his GR Yaris after dropping 16.7s to stage winner Tanak.
“We have to check something,” said Ogier, who had won the previous stage four to extend his advantage over Tanak to 11.7s.
Tanak had been elevated to second overall heading into stage five after Fourmaux’s exit on the previous test, Ano Pavliani.
The M-Sport-Ford driver had navigated through Friday morning’s rough gravel stages to trail rally leader Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier by 5.9s.
Fourmaux’s morning loop times were made even more impressive considering he lost time to the hanging dust from Elfyn Evans’ wounded Toyota GR Yaris, and completed the trio of stages without hybrid power.
However, at the start of stage four, the second pass through Ano Pavliani, the Frenchman clipped a rock and broke the steering on his Ford Puma.
Fourmaux, sitting fifth in the championship standings, pulled over in the stage to attempt a fix as he witnessed his hopes of a fifth podium finish evaporate.
“We have got all the parts. I don’t know, there was nothing in my pace notes and there was a rock on the inside and I touched it and it broke the steering arm and the compression strut,” said Fourmaux.
“I was like, OK we can fix it and continue, but I cannot get the bolts out, it is too tight, I don’t know what to do now.”
Hyundai’s Dani Sordo climbed to third, 22.5s, behind rally leader Tanak ahead of the final stage of the loop later this evening.
Championship leader Thierry Neuville completed the two stages in fourth overall, now equipped with a fully functioning i20 N after being reduced to three cylinders across the morning loop.
“The car was working a lot better, thank you to the team for fixing it,” said Neuville.
Toyota managed to fix a turbocharger problem on Evans’ GR Yaris that hampered the Welshman in the morning. Evans remained outside of the points-paying positions, 9m11.1s adrift.
“Everything is fixed we are just experimenting with a few things now,” said Evans.
The top five was rounded out by M-Sport-Ford’s Gregoire Munster.
