Date: 8/9/2022
Day: 1
Flash N°: 3
Special stage: SS1 – EKO SSS Olympic Stadioum
Distance: 1.95 km
Weather: Clear, 27°C
Road conditions: Dry tarmac

#50 Alexandros TSOULOFTAS / Ross WHITTOCK

“It was great to start this great event. A fantastic experience, I feel blessed.”

#47 Georgios KEHAGIAS / Dimitrios SAINIS

“Great feeling. A lot of people. We thank you all.”

#49 Lambros ATHANASOULAS / Nikolaos ZAKCHAIOS

“It was really nice. I expected to be slower, but in front of this crowd we had to go for it. ”

#52 Emmanouil STEFANIS / Konstantinos STEFANIS

”It was fantastic, I could hear the crowd inside the car.”

#21 Yohan ROSSEL / Valentin SARREAUD

“What a shame [for Andreas Mikkelsen]. The atmosphere was great.”

#7 Pierre-Louis LOUBET / Vincent LANDAIS

“It's unbelievable. It was not easy, but anyway it was fantastic.”

#9 Jourdan SERDERIDIS / Frederic MICLOTTE

“Amazing. Greek people are crazy. Now you know why.”

#6 Dani SORDO / Candido CARRERA

“Really nice, a lot of people. It's easy to make a mistake here, so we took it easy.”

#44 Gus GREENSMITH / Jonas ANDERSSON

“I wasn't nervous, but excited. We all saw what Andreas did. It's quite a long rally and hopefully we can get through it.”

#4 Esapekka LAPPI / Janne FERM

“I think the car is OK. Only cosmetic problem. I locked the wheels under braking and then I couldn't restart the engine.”

#19 Sébastien LOEB / Isabelle GALMICHE

“It’s impressive to see so many people in the stadium, it’s an incredible atmosphere.”

#18 Takamoto KATSUTA / Aaron JOHNSTON

“Challenging weekend, I need to be smart and I will try to find a good rhythm.”

#42 Craig BREEN / Paul NAGLE

“Incredible atmosphere. Just happy I didn't make any mistakes, it's a really tough weekend ahead of us.”

#11 Thierry NEUVILLE / Martijn WYDAEGHE

“It’s like it should always be. Congratulations to the organizers for putting this in place for us and for all the spectators who came today. It shows that it's possible to bring huge crowds to the WRC, and we should look to do more on other events as well."”

#33 Elfyn EVANS Scott MARTIN

“Pretty difficult! Not the greatest run from us, but of course it's a nice setting to start the event.”

#69 Kalle ROVANPERÄ / Jonne HALTTUNEN

“For sure not the most enjoyable stage, but one of the coolest I have ever done. When you drive for a crowd like this, then these kinds of stages are worth it.”

#8 Ott TÄNAK / Martin JÄRVEOJA

“It's an incredible atmosphere. We are doing a big sport, but even these things don't happen too often to us. It was really good fun.”

COMMENTS

In front of a huge, enthusiastic crowd in Athens’ Olympic Stadium, Thierry Neuville claimed the fastest time to edge Suninen by just one-tenth of a second. Dani Sordo was third, 1 second behind Suninen. Andreas Mikkelsen did not complete SS1, after running into the wall and damaging the steering and the front left suspension.

For high quality photos click here