A difficult day two for Petter Solberg and Chris Patterson

A tough morning for the Petter Solberg World rally team saw Petter’s overnight lead narrowed as he lost time cleaning the loose surface gravel being first car on the road. An overshoot on SS8 cost the team eight or ten seconds as Petter and Chris went straight on at a right hand junction and had to turn around and come back. By the end of that stage the 51.6s overnight lead had narrowed to 19.8s ahead of Citroën’s Sebastien Ogier.

Jari-Matti Latvala won the first stage of the afternoon, the second run through 17.41km Klenia Mycenae, which had also been the first stage of the day. Next fastest through was Sebastien Ogier who took the rally lead pushing Petter and Chris into second place overall. Stage win from Sebastien Loeb on SS11 allowed him to push up into second place above Petter and Chris who now found themselves back to third overall.

Sebastien Loeb was fastest through the night stage SS13 Nea Politia and became the new rally leader ahead of his Citroën team-mate Sebastien Ogier. Petter and Chris complete the day in third position overall after a hard day of road cleaning and sit ahead of Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen.

"We lost a lot of time today cleaning the roads," says Petter Solberg. "But that was expected. We figured we would be about 22 seconds behind at the end of the day, so with the 20 seconds now we are exactly as we planned. We still have a chance to win this rally, and the plan is to do that tomorrow!"

Acropolis Rally of Greece continues with five stages tomorrow, including the Power Stage, which will be broadcast live on TV. The first car will be on the road from 0903 local time.