''So many things can happen suddenly''Following the events of the second Leg, three Team Principals participated in the Acropolis Rally's end-of-day press conference.
Q: Marcus had a great entry, always first throughout the day, and in the two long runs no real
bonus and that's where the lead became even better.
MALCOLM WILSON (Ford): Yes, he looked good at the end last night with 10 sec. to separate him from the top six cars and we all said that this (SS10) would be the crucial stage. We were right, after the first section this morning, there was a 20 sec. gap between first and second. It was obviously a decisive stage and indeed it was the most critical one in the rally but Marcus has had a superb route and we've achieved good times...
Q: He seemed very happy at the end of the first one...
MW: Yes, he's been very relaxed and confident. There is no question that the win in Sardinia filled him with confidence. The testing of the car and the changes he made after that rally... Well yes, he feels very confident. But although we had a pretty good record here, tomorrow is a very difficult day and so many things can happen suddenly. So, knowing all the difficult conditions of this rally, there is still a long day to go.
Q: I've seen what happened to Mikko; two long stages were a disaster for him. This morning he lost time in there...
MW: Well, I haven't seen all infos yet but I believe it's pretty spectacular. I think that there was somewhere a misunderstanding on the pacenotes and he told me that he was flat out in forth gear. They went straight off and as he said he had no idea of what was happening and then the windscreen broke by a tree branch. They came away from there really with a remarkable small damage. Nevertheless, during the second round of the long stage, they encountered lots of things on the road as it was not clean but actually more aggressive; they also had a puncture and in about 5 kilometres from the end the mousse lost its use.
Q: It's second place today for Sébastien but in the end Stage 14 seems to have caused him problems. What exactly happened to him because the time on the stage was looking fantastic...
GUY FREQUELIN (Citroën): Well he had a puncture problem in the SS.
Q: Your No.2 car, Dani Sordo. He stopped in Stage 12. What was the problem?
GF: First, he was behind Latvala in the dust and he lost some time in the long stage and in the smaller one he faced a gearbox problem.
Q:Will he be at superally tomorrow? Will we see him?
GF: Well, we'll see if this is possible but I think that yes he will.
Q: Richard, top day, so quite promising on the podium with Petter again. Stage 14 seems to have caused problems to the drivers. What happened to Petter?
RICHARD TAYLOR (Subaru): Well I think it's been a fairly typical Greek rally day with everybody suffering problems from punctures, some damages perhaps, and it's been a really difficult day in that respect. This morning, Petter was a few seconds behind Chris on the low stage at the end when Chris had a puncture. He lost some time catching Chris in the dust and that was a little bit unfortunate. And later on in the afternoon, he had also a broken dumper and that has obviously slowed him down too.
Q: Overall, though, there's been a great performance so far on day 1 and 2 for Subaru. It must be kind of a high now to see one of the cars in such position.
RT: We came here knowing that we made some progress but there is still much work to do. I guess a podium and a sixth place would have felt reasonably good. At the start of the rally, we can always see over the first day and a half our expectations improve from that a bit, so in a way it's a bit disappointing now but overall we made good steps forward.
Source Acropolis Rally
