Ivan Kolev

Special GRReporter correspondent

One of the hardest rallies in the world championship started at 09:45AM this morning.

After the disqualification of the third special stage Evangelistria, due to danger of erosive activities, today’s program consists of the following stages – Harvati, Thiva 1, Bauxites, Drossohori, Thiva 2. After that, all drivers will drive to park Ferme.

Minutes before the start, the world champion Sebastien Loeb shared with journalists that “Rally Acropolis is a very hard competition, one of those, which makes me want to compete.”

This morning the driver was visibly worried: “The tires and the sir-cushions require special attention. I cannot even think about not being here next year, because Loutraki is a very beautiful city. I like Greece very much. It might be true that we drivers are afraid of the heat but we all love the sun.”

Second stage

Dani Sordo is the winner of the second special stage Thiva 1 of the 56^th Rally Acropolis. The Citroen driver ended first with a time of 35:21.9, leaving Jari-Matti Latvala second with 35:29.7 and Hirvonen third with 35:31.2.

Third stage

Surprisingly Evgeny Novikov was the fastest one in the special stage in Bauxites, which was the third and final one for today. The Russian Citroen pilot ended with a time of 14:39.8 and the following two positions were taken by Jari-Matti Latvala (14:42.1) and Dani Sordo (14:42.7).

Under this development, leader in the final ranking is Latvala (50:04.0) with 8.4 second before Sordo (50:12.4).

Third in the final ranking is Hirvonen (50:16.1) and Novikov managed to climb to the fourth position (50:28.5) leaving the world champion Sebastien Loeb on number five (50:31.5).

The Greek pilot, who gave a great performance is Lambros Atanasoulis and he is on number 12 (15:20.8).