Ogier leads after gruelling opening loop in Greece

Only three stages into this 10th round of the season, and the notoriously tough Greek roads are living up to their reputation for punishing cars. Championship leader Thierry Neuville and Elfyn Evans were among those beset by technical troubles.

Neuville’s Hyundai i20 N suffered an engine issue during the first stage, causing the car to intermittently drop to three cylinders throughout the loop. Evans, meanwhile, had to stop to change a wheel before nursing a suspected turbocharger problem with his Toyota GR Yaris, costing him almost nine minutes.

Ogier, who started the event trailing Neuville by 27 points, won two of the morning’s three stages on the rough gravel roads west of Lamia. He attributed his lead to a savvy tyre package, opting for a 50:50 split between soft and hard compound Pirelli tyres, while most rivals leaned more heavily towards hards.

“We had a different strategy with the tyres which didn't feel too good to drive, but we are happy with that,” he said. “From where we started (second on the road behind Neuville), we could not do any better.”

Fourmaux moved into second overall after setting the second-fastest time on the Tarzan stage, overtaking Ott Tänak, who briefly held the lead after SS2. Fourmaux’s performance was particularly impressive given that his M-Sport Ford Puma had been running with a faulty hybrid unit for much of the morning.

Tänak, now 3.9sec behind Fourmaux, admitted he struggled with the balance of his Hyundai after opting for four hard compound tyres on the morning’s final stage. His team-mate Dani Sordo, making his first WRC appearance since Rally Italia Sardegna in June, trailed by 9.6sec in fourth.

Takamoto Katsuta won SS2 and ran as high as second before an incident in Tarzan left his Toyota stricken at the roadside with no drive.

Despite his setbacks, Neuville was relieved to make it to service only 35.7sec behind Ogier in fifth place. On top of his engine troubles, the Belgian had to cope with the unenviable task of sweeping the road as the first car through, clearing loose stones for those behind.

“Obviously we got hit by some technical issues, which didn't help,” he remarked, “and the cleaning issues didn't help. It was a disaster. Hopefully the mechanics can fix it.”

WRC2 frontrunner Yohan Rossel made a superb start to place sixth so far in his Citroën C3 Rally2. Puma Rally1 runner Grégoire Munster trailed him by 3.4sec in seventh with Sami Pajari, Rossel's closest challenger in WRC2, a further 20.9sec back. Gus Greensmith and Lauri Joona completed the top 10.