At the end of the morning loop of the second day, Pierre-Louis Loubet is the new leader of Acropolis Rally with Sebastien Loeb and Esapekka Lappi following him.
Pierre-Louis Loubet takes the lead of a rally for the first time in his WRC career and won his first stage in Greece as he set the fastest time in SS5 despite the fact that he had no brakes in SS4.
Sebastien Loeb dropped to second overall after Stage 5, but he set the fastest time in Stages 2, 3 and 4. However, he said at the end of SS2 that he had an alert with the brakes while his Puma was carrying cosmetic damage at the rear left after the end of SS4. Finally, he lost some seconds in Stage 5 as he overshot a hairpin. The incident happened when it was too late for him to brake after a flat left and had to reverse to get going again.
Esapekka Lappi completes the top three and is 2,3 seconds behind Loeb.
Thierry Neuville comes right behind the Toyota driver for seven tenths of a second and was very lucky to pull through a big slide on a left-hander of SS5. Moreover, he believes that he has to work on the chassis of his i20N.
Ott Tanak completes the top five and dropped some seconds in Stage 4 as he lost the hybrid boost on the road section before the start of that stage. However, the hybrid power was back for the final stage of the morning.
Dani Sordo is sixth overall and left Elfyn Evans behind for only one tenth of a second.
Gus Greensmith, Kalle Rovanpera and Takamoto Katsuta complete the top ten.
Rovanpera was struggling to find traction with his Yaris in these stages while Katsuta overshot a tight right-hander 2.6 Km after the start of SS4.
Greensmith reported at the end of Stage 4 that he had no brakes while he had an overshoot in Stage 5.
Craig Breen is outside the top ten as he stopped after 4.8 Km into Stage 4 to change a wheel resulting in dropping almost 2 minutes. In addition to that, there was a small fire at the rear of his car at SS2 end, but it was quickly extinguished.
Watch below the stage times:
Watch the overall classification after SS5:
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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