Sordo seizes Acropolis lead as team-mate Tänak falters

After Friday’s gruelling opening leg - where championship leader Thierry Neuville struggled with a misfiring engine, and Toyota title rivals Sébastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans lost several minutes due to turbocharger issues - Greece is showing no signs of easing up on its punishing nature.

Tänak, who headed Sordo by 21.8sec overnight in his i20 N car, was forced to pull over and change a wheel just five kilometres into the opening Rengini test. His troubles didn’t end there: shortly after, he had to stop again to change a second wheel, losing over four minutes and dropping to fourth overall.

This misfortune handed the lead to Hyundai part-timer Sordo. Although the 41-year-old Spaniard ceded 16.2sec to Neuville in the morning’s opening stage, he responded by outpacing the Belgian by 3.1sec on Thiva to end the two gravel road tests with a 10.3sec advantage.

While Sordo’s car made it through the stages unscathed, the same couldn't be said for him, with the bandaged Spaniard revealing that he bruised his head while working on his car between stages.

“I was working on the car before and I hit my head,” he laughed. “It’s nice to be the rally leader, but I don’t want it to be like this [after Tänak’s problems].

“We need to win the stages not because the others have problems. I will not take any risks. Of course it will be nice to win, but I have my own targets.”

With Sordo not in contention for this year’s drivers’ series, Neuville’s focus shifts to maintaining a comfortable gap over third-placed Ogier, who is second in the championship standings. The Frenchman trails by 1min 30.9sec in third after SS8, with Tänak nearly two minutes behind him.

Grégoire Munster climbed to fifth overall after a challenging Friday during which he dealt with a persistent handbrake issue. His M-Sport Ford Puma team-mate Adrien Fourmaux, who retired with a broken steering arm on Friday, rejoined the rally this morning but languishes far down the leaderboard. It was a similar story for Toyota men Evans and Takamoto Katsuta, who also endured Fridays to forget.

Sami Pajari shaded Robert Virves to seize the lead in WRC2, with the pair also holding sixth and seventh in the overall standings. Other WRC2 stars Yohan Rossel, Fabrizio Zaldivar and Nikolay Gryazin round out the leaderboard with four stages still remaining today.