Sordo leads after Tanak suffers double puncture

Hyundai’s Dani Sordo moved into the lead of the Acropolis Rally after World Rally Championship title contender Ott Tanak suffered a double puncture in stage seven.

Tanak started Saturday with a 21.8s margin over Sordo before drama struck twice in the day’s opening stage, Rengini, 28.67km.

The 2019 world champion suffered a right rear puncture five kilometres into the stage which resulted in the Estonia pulling to the side of the road to change the wheel. Tanak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja only lost 1m21.6s, but the rally lead had evaporated.

To make matters worse, a second puncture arrived 10 kilometres later, this time, the front right. Tanak eventually reached the stage end losing 4m06.4s dropping him from the lead to fourth overall.

“The first one was off the rim and the second one was a bent rim,” said Tanak, who was the only deriver from the five title contenders to avoid trouble on Friday.

Tanak will now have to nurse his tyres through two more stages to reach a midday tyre fitting zone as Saturday’s schedule doesn’t include a service.

Tanak’s double puncture handed Sordo the rally lead by 7.2s from team-mate and championship leader Thierry Neuville.

“It’s nice to be rally leader, but I don’t like this kind of thing,” said Sordo.

“We need to win the stages not because the others have problems. I didn’t take any risks, I will continue with my target. [Neuville] and the others can push, I have one mission. Of course it would be nice to win.”

Neuville won the stage by 0.2s from Ogier, who moved to third following Tanak’s problems.

“We had a clean run through, was quite rough in the middle section so I took it a bit careful. Completely different conditions to yesterday, we also changed the car set up so I feel better with the car.

When asked if he had a response to Ogier’s comments on Friday about his driving ability when opening the road, he said “No comment”.

In WRC2, Sami Pajari took the class lead from Robert Virves, who faced the disadvantage of being caught up in the hanging dust created by the delayed Tanak.