The stewards of Acropolis Rally gave to Sebastien Ogier and to Vincent Landais a time penalty as the Toyota crew did not fasten their belts correctly in Stage 12.
The Frenchmen were leading Acropolis Rally since Stage 10 after Thierry Neuville's retirement, but a misfortune hit them in Stage 12 when they suffered from two rear punctures. The things worsened as the rear-left suspension failed, therefore Ogier and Landais pulled over to check their Yaris. They realised that it was impossible to repair it, thus they decided to continue in Stage 12 and drove slowly resulting in dropping more than four minuted and losing three places. However, it was obvious from the onboard cameras that both of them entered their Yaris after their stop without fastening correctly their belts and started moving in Stage 12 with the view of getting to the finish line, but they fastened correctly their belts after one minute since their restart. As a consequense of that, the stewards decided to give them a two-minute time penalty which applied at TC12A. Finally, it must be mentioned that Toyota confirmed their restart for today and started their day from ninth position overall, but they dropped to twelfth overall after this time penalty.
Read below the stewards' decision:
Photo Credits: Toyota
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