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 Acropolis Rally 1997The Acropolis Rally official site in Greece. The dusty and very, very rocky byroads of Greece hosted the 8th round of the World Rally Championship. The start lineup had no surprises, with Kenneth Eriksson driving the second Subaru and Richard Burns the second Mitsubishi. Toyota was this time represented by the Swede Thomas Raadstrom and Belgian Freddy Loix, who managed to roll and destroy the Celica on the very first stage of the rally. Colin McRae of Subaru and Ford's Carlos Sainz were fastest on the first of the twenty special stages. On the second stage McRae made a little error, hitting the rocks on the bank of the road, and damaged the steering terminally. One of the winner candidates was out of the rally. On the same stage also Kenneth Eriksson damaged the steering column, but the crew was able to repair the damages. The fixed steering column wasn't apparently as good as new as on SS6 the steering suddenly disappeared, resulting in a series of spins and rolls. Amazingly the crash fixed again the steering and nothing else was seriously broken, so they could bring the wrecked Subaru to the stage finish and continue the rally. Eriksson lost over 11 minutes, though.
The Greek roads were again extremely rough and hard for the cars. After the seven stages of the first day in front was the man who had had the least problems, Juha Kankkunen, who was driving his second WRC event this year. Second were with equal times Mitsubishi's Tommi Makinen (slowed by tire problems) and Richard Burns. Sainz, having damaged the exhaust of the Ford Escort, was fourth. On the first stage of the second day Eriksson's steering finally gave up ending his rally. The hero of the day was Carlos Sainz; he won all but one of the day's stages and took the second position, being 45 seconds faster than Kankkunen. Kankkunen, with no problems was still leading, however, by 37 secs. Third, Richard Burns, in his first Acropolis, was driving a very good rally with no errors. He was one minute behind the leader. Tommi Makinen struggled with numerous problems, part of them caused by errors made due to lack of concentration. Afterwards Makinen criticised strongly the Greek roads saying that the rally is just insane wrecking of the cars. Makinen started the last day fourth, already five minutes behind the leader. The last day proved to be an anti-climax, really. In both leading teams team orders came into play, so Juha Kankkunen slowed down to let Sainz take the win. This is in line with Juha's role in the team. As he joined Ford mid-season, his role is to develop the car and help the team in the manufacturers' championship, as well as assist Sainz in his quest for the drivers' title. It must be admitted that without his early problems Sainz would have won anyway, he was the fastest man of the rally. A much similar decision was made in the Mitsubishi camp. Burns suffered from engine overheating so he couldn't challenge the Fords. On the last road section Burns stopped to get a time penalty which put him behind the championship leader Tommi Makinen. Team orders may not be very sportsmanlike but they are just a part of tactics and a fact of life in many branches of motorsport. Behind the works finishers came Thomas Raadstrom with the Toyota Celica, Uwe Nittel (Mitsubishi) and Gregoire de Mevious (Ford), all driving the so-called semi-works cars.
The success of the Ford team is welcome news, maybe the WRC won't be a two-way battle this year, after all. Now it's time for a seven-week summer break until the circus heads down under to New Zealand at the beginning of August. Results of the 1997 Acropolis Rally:
Championship standings |
Next event: Rally New Zealand (Aug 1 - 5).