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Athanassoulas lets it all out in emotional ERC Acropolis ending

It was an emotional ending to the SEAJETS Acropolis Rally for Lambros Athanassoulas, who reached the finish fearing he'd lost a dream second place in the FIA European Rally Championship on home soil.

Athanassoulas took a 35-second advantage over third-placed Jaromír Tarabus into the long Elatia-Karya stage the concluded the rally, but he got held up behind the slower car of Péter Ranga, who was struggling with a mechanical problem in his Mitsubishi.

When he arrived at the stop line in his Lascaris Foundation Team Greece ŠKODA, the Greek driver burst into tears, but soon discovered that he had in fact held onto second overall - by just one tenth of a second.

Athanassoulas said: "We knew that something was wrong with his car and he was already late, so when we got to the start, we asked for a three-minute gap. The organisers allowed us that but after 10 kilometres we got up behind him. I couldn't get any closer because the minute we were going a little bit fast, we couldn't see anything. You will see from the onboard that the visibility was zero. So we shouldn't risk our rally, we said we're going to settle for third. Just don't translate what we said in Greek please on the onboard!

"Then suddenly after eight kilometres following him on his rhythm and slowly for us, he stopped with an engine problem or a car problem, he didn't just stop to let us by, he just stopped because of his problem.

"We come to the finish and I just started crying, I was feeling angry and all the pressure, and I thought that we had lost it. Then the phone rings from my team and says ‘0.1, you are second guys, good job'. It was incredible and it was a strange feeling, all the emotions, but we are here and we are very happy for it."

Athanassoulas and co-driver Elias Panagiotounis later had their time reduced by 32 seconds to compensate for the delays.

Zdroj: fiaerc.com