After 17 years, the EKO Rally Acropolis sent images of a packed Olympic Stadium around the world as Round 10 of the World Rally Championship got underway in front of 60,000 spectators who watched Thierry Neville in the Hyundai i20 N Rally1 mark the first year in the ECO Super Special Stage.

“It’s the way it should be everywhere, it’s such a great atmosphere here,” Neville told wrc.com at the end of his effort. “Congratulations to the organizers who organized all this for us and to the spectators who came here today. It shows that it is possible to bring huge crowds to the WRC and we need to see how we can achieve something similar at other races.”

But two important pieces of news came from two WRC2 drivers: the first was the fall of Andreas Mikkelsen, who started his fight for the world title in the worst possible way: he crashed into the concrete barrier of his attempt after jumping in the first 200 meters.

The result was that he broke the entire front left side of his Skoda Fabia Rally2 Evo and fatally stopped – despite trying to continue, to cheers from onlookers. So he starts a must-win match with a 10-minute penalty and has now almost lost all hope. Although there is no service until tomorrow evening, the Toksport team has the right to fix the car until tomorrow morning.

The second big piece of news is that the year after Neville was in a Rally2 car, Timu Suninen was just 1/10th of a second ahead of the Belgian in the mighty i20 N Rally1. With Danny Sordo and Ott Tanak trailing 1.0” and 1.1” respectively, Hyundai’s dominance of the Acropolis EKO Super Special Course ended in a 1-2-3-4 at the top.

Indeed they were followed by two other Skoda Fabia Rally2 crews, Lindholm-Hamalainen and Jill-Morales, and then came the Rally1 competition: Sebastian Lebb in the Ford Puma Rally1 was in 7th place, 1.3 inches ahead of Neville and two tenths behind Championship leader Cale Rovanpera followed in the first Toyota at the end of the eighth.

Lamb appeared to have recovered from his morning mechanical problem in the Ford Puma Rally1 in the shakedown, while the Hyundai tried to maintain the pace at which Tanak won the last two races in Finland and Belgium.

After the Special, the EKO Rally Acropolis “caravan” will spend the night in Corinth, from where it will start its route to Lamia using the Special Routes without lunch service – which is the big challenge of this year’s Acropolis.

The statements of the protagonists

• #50 Alexandros Tsouloftas – Ross Whittock (Volkswagen Polo GTI Rally2)

“It was incredible to start first in this beautiful race. A fantastic experience. feel blessed”.

• #47 Giorgos Kechagias / Dimitris Sainis (Skoda Fabia Evo Rally2)

“A great feeling. A lot of people, we thank them very much. Good luck”.

• #49 Lampros Athanassoulas – Nikos Zakhaios (Hyundai i20 N Rally2)

“It was very nice. I wanted to be low key, but in front of this crowd I couldn’t help it.”

• #52 Manos Stefanis / Kostas Stefanis (Hyundai i20 N Rally2)

“It was wonderful. I could hear people coming out of the car. A special moment. We have to focus on tomorrow.”

• #21 Johan Rossel – Valentin Sarrod (Citroen C3 Rally2)

“It is a pity [για τον Andreas Mikkelsen]. The atmosphere was amazing.”

• #7 Pierre-Louis Loubet – Vincent Lande (M-Sport Ford WRT)

“It’s incredible. It wasn’t easy, but it was still fantastic.”

• #9 Iordanis Serderidis – Frederic Miklot (M-Sport Ford WRT)

“Incredible, experience of a lifetime! The Greeks are “mad”. Now we know why.”

• #6 Dani Sordo – Cadito Carrera (Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT)

“Really nice. Lots of people. It’s easy to make a mistake here, so we held back.”

• #44 Gus Greensmith – Jonas Anderson (M-Sport Ford WRT)

“I wasn’t nervous, but excited. We all saw what happened to Andreas. It’s a big fight and we hope we can make it. Very nice special offer”.

• #4 Esapeka Lapi – Yane Ferm (Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT)

“I think the car is okay. External damage only. I lost control when braking and couldn’t restart the engine.”

• #19 Sebastian Lebb – Isabelle Galmis (M-Sport Ford WRT)

“It’s impressive to see so many people in the stadium. Incredible atmosphere.”

• #18 Takamoto Katsuta – Aaron Johnston (Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT New Generation)

“The weekend will be a challenge. I have to move smart and try to find a rhythm.”

• #42 Craig Breen – Paul Nagle (M Sport Ford WRT)

“Incredible atmosphere. So glad I didn’t make any mistakes. We have a really tough weekend ahead of us.”

• #11 Thierry Neville – Martin Vidage (Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT)

“It is as it should always be. Fantastic crowd and atmosphere. Congratulations to the organization that made this possible for us and the spectators who came today. It shows that it is possible to get a lot of people into the WRC and similar things should be done at other races.”

• #33 Elfyn Evans-Scott Martin (Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT)

“Pretty difficult! Not our best performance, but of course a nice place to start the game.”

• #69 Kale Rovanpera – Jone Haltunen (Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT)

“Definitely not the funnest stage I’ve ever ridden, but definitely one of the coolest. But when you ride in front of so many people, these stages are worth it.”

• #8 Ot Tanak – Martin Jarveoja (Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT)

“Incredible atmosphere. Our sport is exciting, but even that doesn’t happen often to us. It was a lot of fun.”

Sportish lives the legendary EKO Acropolis Rally together with EKO, the largest Greek marketing company in its category and a main sponsor of the event and also the “EKO Super Special Stage” in OAKA.