HYUNDAI TAKE TOP THREE PLACES IN ACROPOLIS RALLY, THE TOUGHEST OF THE SEASON

Neuville wins, leading home team-mates Sordo and Tänak

This season’s Junior WRC title goes to Jurgenson, who finished second on the rally

Testoni: “A very demanding rally, but no more than we expected”

It was expected to be one of the toughest Acropolis Rallies in recent years, the toughest of the season and it certainly lived up to the predictions. In fact, it was possibly even more difficult, with several incidents over the three days of the rally, run on Friday and Saturday on dusty terrain in hot conditions, with plenty of sharp stones, the same being true of the Power Stage, which saw Sebastian Ogier lose what had looked like a certain second place, having dominated Super Sunday. Victory went to Thierry Neuville who thus extended his and Hyundai’s lead in the title race. He was followed home by team-mates Dani Sordo and Ott Tänak, the latter never giving up despite the problems he encountered, to take the valuable points on offer on Super Sunday.

Sami Pajari won in WRC2 at the wheel of his Toyota, after recording exactly the same time as Robert Virves, who was however slower in SS1. That means the title fight now has two contenders: Oliver Solberg, who will compete in just one more round in Chile, and the aforementioned Pajari. Norbert Maior won in the Junior WRC of the Acropolis Rally, the last round in this category, while the title goes to Romet Jurgenson. Acropolis also crowned Armin Kremer in a Skoda as WRC Masters Cup 2024 champion.

THE CHALLENGE
As expected, given the length of some stages and the nature of the road surfaces which featured more large and sharp rocks than usual, thus leading to a high risk of punctures, the hard tyres saw the most use, especially on Friday and Saturday, when strength and durability were the main requirements.  

The soft compound Scorpions played their part in the first sections on Friday and Saturday, when they provided grip for the early runners on the stages which were always very slippery and dusty on the first runs. The softs then came into their own on Sunday morning, because of the nature of the terrain and the very heavy rain of the previous night. It meant the teams had expected the surfaces to be more slippery and wetter than they eventually were. The uncertainties thrown up by rain on Saturday night led to a large number of different strategies going into Super Sunday: these ranged from Neuville’s softs only approach (6) to a more balanced 2 hards and 3 softs for Evans, while Tänakand Ogier both went for 1 hard and 4 softs. The Power Stage also saw a variety of strategies, predominantly with the softs, although this was partly down to the availability of new tyres, as was the case for Ogier, who went with 5 hards due to a lack of new softs.

As highlighted in the Pirelli engineers’ post-recce Analysis, the toughest, most demanding stages which played a significant role in deciding the outcome of the rally, were the two longest ones of the weekend, the 38.67 km of SS7, Rengini and SS9-11 and the 25.87 kilometres Aghii Theodori.

PIRELLI QUOTE
Terenzio Testoni, Rally Activity Manager: “The rally was as hard as we expected and the way it tested the tyres, both hard and soft, matched our expectations. The hard Scorpion delivered the required robustness, even on the roughest terrain, while once again, the soft proved to be a great choice on dry surfaces. Excellent management of both tyres by the driver was essential and by no means easy: generally, on other rallies, one tyre was the dominant choice, especially the soft.”

Here below the graphs from the Acropolis Rally