WRC 3
Faultless Fontana flies high in WRC3
Matteo Fontana maintained his WRC3 lead throughout Saturday on a sunbaked EKO Acropolis Rally Greece.
Inheriting a comfortable lead of nearly four minutes mid-afternoon on Friday when Nataniel Bruun retired with engine problems, Fontana was allowed to adopt a risk-free approach throughout the remainder of Friday and into Saturday.
The reigning champion eventually brought his Ford Fiesta Rally3 home on Saturday evening with a lead of 3min 52.2sec over second-placed Tymek Abramowski.
The young Polish driver could only make the slightest of inroads into Fontana’s lead across Saturday after a mid-stage wheel change on Friday morning’s opening test had him playing two days of catch up. However, should Fontana encounter any issues on Sunday’s four remaining stages, Abramowski is perfectly poised to benefit.
Putting Friday engine disappointment in his Fiesta behind him, Bruun turned his attention to setting quickest times, picking up two stage wins but remained out of podium contention more than 10min down on third-placed Flandy, the top-placed of the Greek WRC3 drivers.
Rounding out the top five was a second Greek in Nikolaos Ntavaris, with a lead of more than 30min over sixth-placed Grzegorz Bonder.
