ACROPOLIS RALLY - MITSUBISHI

The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution continued it’s season domination of Group N and the FIA Production Car World Rally Championship by taking the top five places in the category on the Acropolis Rally of Greece, and in total filling eight out of the top ten.

Andreas Aigner (Austria) completed an astonishing fight-back in his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX to win his second FIA Production Car World Rally Championship this season, moving him into a comfortable lead in the standings for the all-Group N series. Even more impressive than Aigner’s performance was the general pace and reliability shown by all of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions in the field. The Japanese machine took eight of the top 10 positions on what has been labeled the toughest Acropolis Rally in years.

Aigner dropped time when he broke the intercooler on his Lancer Evolution on the opening day. Despite tumbling down the leaderboard to 20th place in the PWRC standings, Aigner battled back to move into the lead on Saturday afternoon and finally collect his win this afternoon.

"I can’t believe this!" he said after the day’s seventh and final stage and spraying the champagne. "I never thought this was possible. Again, today was all about finding the right speed and the right pace. I did that. It’s such a difficult event. If you go too slowly, you can easily damage the car as much as if you are going to fast. It has certainly not been an easy event, but to win is just fantastic more than I expected. I have to pay tribute to the Mitsubishi as well. This is a Group N car, but it survived some incredibly big rocks and difficult roads."

Bernardo Sousa (Portugal) made it a near dream finish for the Red Bull Mitsubishi team, with him brining the sister car to that of Aigner home in second. Sousa’s only problem of the day came in SS16. He said: "We ran wide in one corner and hit the wheel. I thought we had a puncture, but it had damaged the suspension. I was quite worried, there was a bit of noise coming from the wheel, but when we got out, the sumpguard was touching the wheel so we removed the guard and drove to service. The team fixed the car in service, allowing us to carry on to third. What a great result for the team!"

Armindo Araujo (Portugal) moved past Fumio Nutahara (Japan) for third place. The multiple Japanese champion’s pace was slowed slightly in the final day when he bolted on some new suspension parts and was not quite up to speed with their effect on the car’s handling. Araujo, almost 30 seconds ahead of Nutahara at the end, said: "I’m glad to get to the end of this rally. It’s been one of those events. We’ve shown good speed, but this wasn’t the one for us."

Evgeny Aksakov (Russia) ensured an all-Mitsubishi top five. Former PWRC category leader Juho Hanninen (Finland) collected two points for finishing seventh, Loris Baldacci (San Marino, Mirco’s brother) taking the last point for eigth and Amjad Farrah (Jordan) rounding out Mitsubishi’s finest ever showing on a round of the Production Car World Rally Championship in ninth.

Martin Raum (Estonia) finished the event, provisionally second in PWRC, however was excluded from the results after the post-event scrutineering found irregularities with the brakes.

After three days of scintillating competition in the searing heat and bone-dry and rock hard Greek rocks, there’s no respite for the fastest Group N drivers in the world, as they head for round four of the series, the Rally of Turkey which starts in Antalya 10 days’ time.

In the overall positions on the Acropolis Rally of Greece, Sebastien Loeb (France) won the event, with Petter Solberg (Norway) second and Mikko Hirvonen (Finland) third.

OVERALL CLASSIFICATION
Pos	Driver Co-Driver	Nat	Vehicle	Grp Pos	Total Time	Diff Leader
1 M	Sebastien Loeb Daniel Elena	F MC	CITROEN C4 WRC	A 1	3:54:54.7	**:**:**.*
2 M	Petter Solberg Philip Mills	N GB	SUBARU IMPREZA WRC 2006	A 2	3:56:04.2	1:09.5
3 M	Mikko Hirvonen Jarmo Lehtinen	FIN FIN	FORD FOCUS RS WRC 07	A 3	3:56:50.8	1:56.1
4	Urmo Aava Kuldar Sikk	EE EE	CITROEN C4 WRC	A 4	3:59:14.4	4:19.7
5 M	Daniel Sordo Marc Marti	E E	CITROEN C4 WRC	A 5	3:59:44.1	4:49.4
6	Matthew Wilson Scott Martin	GB GB	FORD FOCUS RS WRC 07	A 6	4:01:06.0	6:11.3
7 M	Jari-Matti Latvala Miikka Anttila	FIN FIN	FORD FOCUS RS WRC 07	A 7	4:01:42.2	6:47.5
8 M	Henning Solberg Cato Menkerud	N N	FORD FOCUS RS WRC 07	A 8	4:04:08.7	9:14.0
9 M	Toni Gardenmeister Tomi Tuominen	FIN FIN	SUZUKI SX4	A 9	4:05:08.5	10:13.8
10	Conrad Rautenbach David Senior	ZW GB	CITROEN C4 WRC	A 10	4:08:23.8	13:29.1
11 M	Per-Gunnar Andersson Jonas Andersson	S S	SUZUKI SX4	A 11	4:08:47.2	13:52.5
12	Khalid Al Qassimi Michael Orr	UAE GB	FORD FOCUS RS WRC 07	A 12	4:08:50.3	13:55.6
13 M	Federico Villagra Jorge Perez Companc	RA RA	FORD FOCUS RS WRC 07	A 13	4:13:24.9	18:30.2
14 P	Andreas Aigner Klaus Wicha	A D	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 1	4:16:06.7	21:12.0
15 P	Bernardo Sousa Carlos Magalhaes	P P	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 2	4:17:04.8	22:10.1
../
17 P	Fumio Nutahara Daniel Barritt	J GB	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 4	4:18:19.6	23:24.9
18 P	Evgeny Aksakov Alexander Kornilov	RUS RUS	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 5	4:23:11.6	28:16.9
20 P	Juho Hanninen Mikko Markkula	FIN FIN	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 7	4:25:07.0	30:12.3
21 P	Loris Baldacci Rudy Pollet	RSM I	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 8	4:26:39.5	31:44.8
22 P	Amjad Farrah Nicola Arena	HKJ I	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 9	4:29:18.4	34:23.7
28	Dimitris Nassoulas Mihalis Patrikoussis	GR GR	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 14	4:48:33.6	53:38.9
31	Elias Athanassiou Pantelis Iakovidis	GR GR	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION VIII	N 17	4:59:09.0	1:04:14.3
32	Emmanuel Panagiotopoulos Helen Malaktari	GR GR	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 18	5:01:02.9	1:06:08.2
33	Panayiotis Zissis Vassillis Zissis	GR GR	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 19	5:02:17.0	1:07:22.3
34 P	Martin Prokop Jan Tomanek	CZ CZ	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION IX	N 20	5:06:00.5	1:11:05.8
38	Athanasios Tslilis Emmanouel Ahtidas	GR GR	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION VIII	N 22	5:24:34.3	1:29:39.6
40	Dionissis Gazetas Panayiotis Triandafylloy	GR GR	MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION VII	A 18	5:48:54.2	1:53:59.5

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