World championship leader Sebastien Ogier of France was forced out of the first special of the Acropolis Rally on Friday after running into mechanical problems between Kineta and Pissia.
Although he failed to finish the first special, he will nonetheless line up on Saturday morning for the second day of racing, although he will be several minutes in arrears due to a penalty picked up for not completing Friday’s course.
After posting the fastest time in the qualifying special, Ogier opted to start 11th and last of the top drivers but the move backfired as he failed to complete the opening 47.7km stage on punishing roads.
Exact details of the problem were not revealed by his Volkswagen team but the writing was on the wall when he was halted early in the special before retiring for good at the 26km mark.
Russian Evgueny Novikov was fastest in both specials and opened up a 30sec lead in his Ford Fiesta over Citroen’s Spanish driver Dani Sordo while Finland’s Jari-Matti Latvala was a further 9secs back in a VW Polo-R.
Norwegian Mads Ostberg in the second Ford lost three minutes on the day and is out of contention after replacing a wheel while compatriot and former world champion Mikko Hirvonen in a Citroen lost nearly six minutes due to a steering problem.
“At the beginning of the stage we did a lot of switching between concrete and gravel and each time the surface changed we went over a step,” explained a tearful Ostberg.
“I was going through a corner and onto a step when the wheel just fell off.”
There will a further eight specials on Saturday and four on Sunday.