Bruno Magalhães leads taxing ERC Acropolis Leg Two

Rock-strewn stages and high tyre wear meant balancing speed with safety, a compromise Magalhães achieved perfectly. He won Saturday morning’s second and third stages to establish a 53.7s lead, which he extended to 1m04.7s by day’s end.

Mol Racing Team pilot Norbert Herczig is now a clear second overall after his podium battle with Grzegorz Grzyb was decided in the former’s favour. A front left puncture for Grzyb dropped Rufa Sport’s main man over three minutes in the day’s final stage, promoting his compatriot Hubert Ptaszek to third place.

Despite spending all day with road sweeping duties as first car on the road, Simos Galatariotis climbed from P10 all the way to fourth place, though a recovering Brynildsen in fifth has closed the gap between them to 46.8s.

Despite his 3m30.5s time loss through SS8, the day’s final stage, Grzyb slotted into sixth position overall, just ahead of Jourdan Serderidis in seventh. Paulo Nobre kept his car on the road and in one piece to move into eighth place, only 12.1s behind Serderidis.

Reigning ERC2 category champion Tibor Érdi Jr. not only leads his production-spec class, but also holds ninth position overall, his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X coping well with Acropolis’ rough stages.

Orhan Avcioğlu rounds out the top 10 overall, coping admirably with a broken damper that led to his car “bouncing like a ping-pong ball”.