Kalle Rovanpera has made it two Acropolis Rally wins out of three for his third victory of the season to extend his WRC lead to 33 points with three rounds remaining.
With a lead of more than two minutes starting Sunday’s deciding trio of stages, it was very much Rovanpera’s 11th WRC victory to lose.
That realisation was reflected by his conservative run through Sunday’s opening two tests, which he completed with a reduced overall margin of 1:29.2s with just the Power Stage to come.
The Finn could also have played it safe through the final run, which had been reduced to nine kilometres in length due to the torrential rain earlier in the week.
But with five bonus points on offer for the eventual pacesetter, the Toyota driver went on a flat-out charge to beat his team-mate Elfyn Evans by 2.5s and secure victory on the 70th anniversary Acropolis Rally by 1:31.7s.
“Of course, it’s a big relief,” said the 22-year-old, who crashed heavily on the previous round in Finland.
“After a difficult Rally Finland for sure we needed to come back now, even though we never left.
“Strong performance, starting first and finishing first is quite nice. It was a clever drive and a good push [on the Power Stage].
“A big thank you to the team, the car is super-strong, fast and everything and we can always do a good job.”
Evans, meanwhile, started the final leg trailing Hyundai’s Dani Sordo by 5.0s in third but was up to second following his fastest time through the opening Tarzan test, after which Sordo reported dropping time due to a lack of traction from not having a complete set of soft compound tyres to cope with the damp patches present on the stage.
But Sordo responded on the first run through Grammeni, beating Evans by 1.3s to narrow the Briton’s margin to 2.7s prior to the Power Stage, a repeat of the Grammeni test.
However, Evans went quicker than his Spanish rival to place runner-up behind Rovanpera with Sordo 4.2s behind.
Ott Tanak’s recovery from 32nd, the result of time penalties incurred while he replaced his M-Sport Ford Puma’s faulty water pump in the tyre fitting zone on Friday morning, netted fourth place as Esapekka Lappi and Takamoto Katsuta finished fifth and sixth respectively.
After dropping out of the lead with suspension damage on Saturday’s final test and then failing to complete the road section back to service in Lamia yesterday evening, Sebastien Ogier restarted on Sunday morning and completed the top 10.
He did so with a two-minute penalty handed out after he restarted on Stage 12 without he or co-driver Vincent Landais being properly strapped in.
Thierry Neuville posted a pair of top two stage times on his return following his exit from first place on Saturday but finished outside the Power Stage points after going sixth-quickest.
The Belgian Hyundai driver now trails championship leader Rovanpera by 66 points and has conceded his outside title chances as a result, even though there are still 90 to fight for.
Andreas Mikkelsen dropped to as low as 14th in WRC2 following a spate of punctures on Friday morning, but charged back to beat his Toksport Skoda team-mate Gus Greensmith to the WRC2 win by 10.3s and increase his championship lead over PH Sport Citroen driver Yohan Rossel, who finished third in class.
Mikkelsen’s triumph came despite the Norwegian reporting handbrake and engine issues after the penultimate stage.
The all-gravel Rally Chile, which returns to the WRC schedule for the first time since 2019, hosts Round 11 of the season from September 28-October 1.
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