Next round of the 2013 World Rally Championship is back in Europe - the famous Acropolis Rally in Greece (31 May - 2 June) - which has attracted twelve manufacturer team entries, a record for the 2013 season. By international standards this is a much smaller event than usual, heavily localised this year in the region around Corinth and the Peloponnese, the area where it is rumoured the rally will be based in future. Sixth round of the series, the Acropolis still carries the traditional character of an all-gravel event run in warm weather (though not always sunny, sometimes wet!) and this time with some special characteristics.
The format of the rally this year is different. The event is one day shorter, starting on the Friday with Qualifying in the morning followed by the Ceremonial Start at the Zappion in Athens before two stages that evening, the first of which is the longest of the event, at 47km. Saturday is a full day of action in the Peloponnese. The rally finishes with a half day east of Corinth on the Sunday. The rally does not venture further north than the Corinth region, so no Itea, no Delphi, no Thiva and no views of Mount Olympus! The shorter format however is generally welcomed by the teams, as this substantially reduces the cost of competing here. And among the private championship competitors, it makes the Acropolis a rally which is more attractive. The Acropolis rally has been chosen by 17 entries in the WRC2 category, in which competitors can score points on six of seven selected events. Only Portugal has so far proved more attractive to WRC2 competitors this year, though there are no championship contenders this time in the WRC3 category. The move away from the traditional rallying areas in central Greece however is a momentous step and is very controversial for local fans. Economic reasons as well as creating a more compact event are behind the move, with the authorities of Peloponnese more able to help with the logistics of the event.
There will be a night stage on the Friday evening. This is an internationally very controversial feature of the route. A night stage was held during the 2011 event with inconclusive consequences, but then the FIA requested the experiment was repeated at the Catalunya Rally in 2011 with absolutely catastrophic consequences on the effect on the event. The problem of dust is only severe and if there is no wind, which traditionally there is not in the evenings in Greece, and if the gravel surfaces are dry and dusty, which they usually are... The knock-on of this situation revolves around the Qualifying Stage running order selection earlier in the day which will apply to the two stages on the Friday evening. For the long first stage to be run in daylight, a later running position should be best, but for the second (night-time) stage it will be critically important to be first car on the road. It is highly likely that the event will be won and lost before it even starts, on account of the running order decisions made after the Qualifying stage.
The Acropolis Rally has one special regulation, seemingly insignificant but in fact vitally important to the teams. This concerns the tyres. On other rallies, registered championship drivers can only leave tyre changing zones with four new tyres, on this event because of the high quantity of punctures traditionally suffered, they can have five. This has a substantial effect on tyre strategies during the event. Two spares are always allowed, but the fact of carrying an extra new tyre as one of the spares substantially increases the opportunities to rotate the new tyres for performance advantage reasons. This situation only applies on the Friday stages, when there is a tyre change point between the first and second stage, as only one spare tyre will normally be carried. On the previous rounds of the 2013 WRC, crews wishing to rotate their tyres between stages have usually had to fit a tyre on the car that had already been used. Assuming conditions are dry, competitors are expected to use hard tyres all the way and not normally use soft tyres during the rally at all. With only 306km of special stage competition this is one of the shortest routes in the series this year.
Fifty entries were on the original list for the rally but since then the entry for Gabriel Pozzo in a Fiesta WRC has been withdrawn. Almost half of the entry are Ford Fiestas prepared by M-Sport, and eight of the WRC2 cars, almost half, are turbo 1.6 litre RRC version Fiestas, the Ukraine Mentos team’s Minis and Robert Kubica’s Citroen. The major technical novelty of the event is that all the ten Junior championship Fiesta R2 cars will run with the new GEM fuel, a mixture of regular petrol, bio-ethanol and bio-methanol, aimed at reducing the impact of greenhouse gasses by more than 50% compared with regular petrol. No performance details of the modified cars have been released, but in recent years Fiestas in Sweden were modified to run on eco-fuels for reasons of enhanced performance. The Acropolis organisers have confirmed it has been necessary to arrange for an extra refuelling zone en route for these cars.
It is not only the international crews but also the national rally championship competitors who have been lured back to the Acropolis Rally. For national champion competitors the second and third legs count as two different events for the GRC, the first and second rounds of the Greek season. There are 33 GRC competitors, seven more than in 2012. Seven GRC crews will also be competing in the full Acropolis Rally (with international status) and the other 26 crews will compete independently only for the first and second rounds of GRC 2013. As for the national drivers, Lambros Athanassoulas, the only Greek driver to score world championship points on this event since 2004, drives a Ralliart Italy Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X.
Next round of the 2013 World Rally Championship is back in Europe - the famous Acropolis Rally in Greece (31 May - 2 June) - which has attracted twelve manufacturer team entries, a record for the 2013 season. By international standards this is a much smaller event than usual, heavily localised this year in the region around Corinth and the Peloponnese, the area where it is rumoured the rally will be based in future. Sixth round of the series, the Acropolis still carries the traditional character of an all-gravel event run in warm weather (though not always sunny, sometimes wet!) and this time with some special characteristics.
The format of the rally this year is different. The event is one day shorter, starting on the Friday with Qualifying in the morning followed by the Ceremonial Start at the Zappion in Athens before two stages that evening, the first of which is the longest of the event, at 47km. Saturday is a full day of action in the Peloponnese. The rally finishes with a half day east of Corinth on the Sunday. The rally does not venture further north than the Corinth region, so no Itea, no Delphi, no Thiva and no views of Mount Olympus! The shorter format however is generally welcomed by the teams, as this substantially reduces the cost of competing here. And among the private championship competitors, it makes the Acropolis a rally which is more attractive. The Acropolis rally has been chosen by 17 entries in the WRC2 category, in which competitors can score points on six of seven selected events. Only Portugal has so far proved more attractive to WRC2 competitors this year, though there are no championship contenders this time in the WRC3 category. The move away from the traditional rallying areas in central Greece however is a momentous step and is very controversial for local fans. Economic reasons as well as creating a more compact event are behind the move, with the authorities of Peloponnese more able to help with the logistics of the event.
There will be a night stage on the Friday evening. This is an internationally very controversial feature of the route. A night stage was held during the 2011 event with inconclusive consequences, but then the FIA requested the experiment was repeated at the Catalunya Rally in 2011 with absolutely catastrophic consequences on the effect on the event. The problem of dust is only severe and if there is no wind, which traditionally there is not in the evenings in Greece, and if the gravel surfaces are dry and dusty, which they usually are... The knock-on of this situation revolves around the Qualifying Stage running order selection earlier in the day which will apply to the two stages on the Friday evening. For the long first stage to be run in daylight, a later running position should be best, but for the second (night-time) stage it will be critically important to be first car on the road. It is highly likely that the event will be won and lost before it even starts, on account of the running order decisions made after the Qualifying stage. The Acropolis Rally has one special regulation, seemingly insignificant but in fact vitally important to the teams. This concerns the tyres. On other rallies, registered championship drivers can only leave tyre changing zones with four new tyres, on this event because of the high quantity of punctures traditionally suffered, they can have five. This has a substantial effect on tyre strategies during the event. Two spares are always allowed, but the fact of carrying an extra new tyre as one of the spares substantially increases the opportunities to rotate the new tyres for performance advantage reasons. This situation only applies on the Friday stages, when there is a tyre change point between the first and second stage, as only one spare tyre will normally be carried. On the previous rounds of the 2013 WRC, crews wishing to rotate their tyres between stages have usually had to fit a tyre on the car that had already been used. Assuming conditions are dry, competitors are expected to use hard tyres all the way and not normally use soft tyres during the rally at all. With only 306km of special stage competition this is one of the shortest routes in the series this year. Fifty entries were on the original list for the rally but since then the entry for Gabriel Pozzo in a Fiesta WRC has been withdrawn. Almost half of the entry are Ford Fiestas prepared by M-Sport, and eight of the WRC2 cars, almost half, are turbo 1.6 litre RRC version Fiestas, the Ukraine Mentos team’s Minis and Robert Kubica’s Citroen. The major technical novelty of the event is that all the ten Junior championship Fiesta R2 cars will run with the new GEM fuel, a mixture of regular petrol, bio-ethanol and bio-methanol, aimed at reducing the impact of greenhouse gasses by more than 50% compared with regular petrol. No performance details of the modified cars have been released, but in recent years Fiestas in Sweden were modified to run on eco-fuels for reasons of enhanced performance. The Acropolis organisers have confirmed it has been necessary to arrange for an extra refuelling zone en route for these cars.
It is not only the international crews but also the national rally championship competitors who have been lured back to the Acropolis Rally. For national champion competitors the second and third legs count as two different events for the GRC, the first and second rounds of the Greek season. There are 33 GRC competitors, seven more than in 2012. Seven GRC crews will also be competing in the full Acropolis Rally (with international status) and the other 26 crews will compete independently only for the first and second rounds of GRC 2013. As for the national drivers, Lambros Athanassoulas, the only Greek driver to score world championship points on this event since 2004, drives a Ralliart Italy Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X.