Rocky roads await Brendan in Acropolis Rally

Brendan and Rhianon's World Rally Championship (WRC) Academy campaign continues this weekend with the running of the second round of the 2012 Championship, the Acropolis Rally in Greece.

After spending last weekend at the FIA Institute's Young Driver Excellence Academy in Austria, Brendan travelled to Greece on Saturday where he met up with Rhianon who had flown in from Australia earlier in the week.

The Australian duo will spend this week writing their pace notes for the event which consists of ten stages of just over 200 competitive kilometres in distance.

The first round of the WRC Academy, Rally Portugal, threw up extremely difficult conditions, with torrential rain and heavy fog causing chaos, and eventually resulting in the cancellation of a number of stages. The Acropolis Rally will be no less challenging even if the weather remains dry. The Greek rally is known for its rough and rocky stages and punctures are a constant worry to competitors.

It's because of the rough road conditions that the Academy competitors, in their Ford Fiesta R2s, will only be contesting the morning stages on both Friday and Saturday of the event. Competitors in the main WRC field will repeat each morning's stages in the afternoon, but the conditions are expected to be too difficult on the 2WD Fiestas which run after the WRC field.

After finishing second in the opening round in Portugal, Brendan is keen to get back behind the wheel of the R2 and add to his Championship points tally with another podium finish.

Brendan and Rhianon have spent much of this week writing their pacenotes for the rally. They will have a short pre-event test on Thursday morning before the rally gets underway later that afternoon.

"We've been doing our Reconnaissance of the stages the last couple of days and there are some really unbelievably rough sections," Brendan said. "The roads are also changing all the time throughout the stage with many changing surfaces. We are doing our recce of Friday's stages today and then we will be ready for the event."

Rally Acropolis starts on Thursday evening with a Ceremonial Start followed by a night stage of approximately 25 kilometres. Crews will then contest five stages on Friday morning and another four on Saturday morning before the WRC Academy winner is presented with their trophy around 3pm (Greece time) on Saturday afternoon.