Peugeot and Rovanperä thirst for a victory in Greece

- stage wins of the opening day took Harri into battle for victory

Peugeot and Rovanperä thirst for a victory in Greece
- stage wins of the opening day took Harri into battle for victory

Acropolis Rally in Greece is competed for the 50th time this year. 12 years have passed since the last Finnish victory. The latest win for Peugeot in Greece came in 1986, by Juha Kankkunen. The previous year Timo Salonen had succeeded in the same achievement, with his Peugeot 205 Turbo. The best achievement of the new 206 WRC so far is Marcus Grönholm's second place in 2002. The year before, Harri Rovanperä was third, but Peugeot is yet to gain its first victory. Richard Burns of the team Peugeot has won the rally in 1999, but then he drove a Subaru.

Rovanperä second on the opening leg
- front position lost in tyre choice of the start
This year's Acropolis Rally started under Ford's rule. Rovanperä was only 8th on the opening stage (SS 1, Paviliami, 24,45 km) and 9th on the next one (SS 2, Stromi 1, 14,61 km), but succeeded in posting a stage win on the third (SS 3, Eleftherohori, 18,67 km) just before the service break, which brought him into the top six. The good pace continued, and he drove the stage fastest time also on the next stage (SS 4, Rengini 1, 11,84 km), climbing to third overall. By clocking the fastest time again on the longest stage of the rally (SS 5, Elatia-Zeli 1, 34,68 km), Rovanperä gained the second place overall, only 9,2 seconds behind the leader of the rally, Ford's Markko Märtin. On the following two stages (SS 6, Paviliami 2, 24,45 km and SS 7, Stromi 2, 14,61 km) as well, Rovanperä was faster than Märtin, and the gap to the front was reduced to just 4,8 seconds.

- I'm annoyed that we chose the wrong tyres for the first stages. I assumed the roads would be cleaner for us already, but I was wrong. That's a bad thing, because we could be leading the rally by 25-30 seconds by now. On stage 5, driving behind Toni (Gardemeister, Skoda), we suffered from dust for about 6-7 km, but Toni did let us pass OK. I'm confident that we'll take the lead already on Saturday's first stage, because everything seems to be working now and I enjoy driving, a happy Rovanperä told on Friday evening.

Situation after the first leg, SS 8/22
1. Markko Märtin, Ford, 1 h 47'35,0" (79,9 km/h)
2. Harri Rovanperä, Peugeot, + 00'04,8"
3. Petter Solberg, Subaru, + 00'23,9"
4. Carlos Sainz, Citroen, + 00'37,9"
5. Tommi Mäkinen, Subaru, + 00'38,2"
6. Gilles Panizzi, Peugeot, + 00'48,2"
7. Colin McRae, Citroen, + 00'56,8"
8. Didier Auriol, Skoda, + 01'29,7"