The penultimate day of the Greece Rally 2026 took the field into the hills around the lakes of Volvi and Koronia, with two special stages totalling 185 kilometres. Stefan Svitko won again and heads into the final day with a lead of 1 hour and 30 minutes. Behind him, the Dutch riders produced the most notable results: Dennis Schans finished third on the day and Ruben van der Vlis sits sixth in the overall standings, 54 seconds off fifth place.
The SSV category was tense too. Kees Box and Kees Box Jr. won the day, but it is the fight for the overall lead that has tightened most: Wil Wouters and Niels van Limpt go into the final day with just six minutes in hand over Kenny de Vries and Jo Lenders.
Fast trails and plenty of navigation
The day consisted of SS8 Volvi over 118 kilometres and SS9 Sochos over 67 kilometres, separated by a short connection at Nymfopetra. Ruud Vollebregt, who set the fifth-fastest SSV time in his Can-Am, was pleased with the layout: “Nice tracks and distance.” According to him, the afternoon stage involved a lot of navigation with fast trails, which in his view made it challenging for everyone.
Svitko was more than eleven minutes faster than Harvey-Grounds in the morning stage, but had to concede in the afternoon: the Briton was 2:15 faster than the Slovak on SS9. Over the whole day Svitko kept 9:14 in hand, good for his fifth daily win of the week.
Schans third, Plarina in the top ten
Dennis Schans put in the best result of his rally so far. The Memo Tours rider set the third-fastest time on both stages and finished third on the day, 23:19 behind Svitko. In the overall standings he is eighth, at 3:12:12, and he retains a comfortable lead in the M1 class.
Ruben van der Vlis (Riding Adventures) finished sixth on the day and sits sixth overall, 3:00:19 behind Svitko. Daniel Rymes is 54 seconds ahead of him, Robert Parry is 8:08 ahead and Henrik Rahm follows at 10:29. In the M2 class Van der Vlis is fifth, behind Svitko, Harvey-Grounds, Ferdinand Kreidl and Parry.
Robbert Plarina recorded his best result of the week with the tenth-fastest daily time and sits seventeenth in the standings. Nico Dekker finished fifteenth on the day and is now the second Dutchman in the M1 class, ahead of Frank de Mik. Bert Veenje finished 24th, De Mik 26th, Jaap Martens 31st and Henk Nijmeijer 37th. In the standings Dekker is nineteenth, De Mik 21st, Martens 27th, Nijmeijer 32nd and Veenje 37th.
The M1 class did take a new turn. Marios Gardelis, who had been second in the class, failed to reach the finish of SS9. Because competitors who do not complete a stage are classified behind the finishers, the Greek dropped to 34th place. As a result, the three Memo Tours riders now hold the top three positions in M1.
Box wins the day, Wouters under pressure
Kees Box and Kees Box Jr. (QFF Racing) were the fastest of the SSVs with 3:21:49. Kenny de Vries and Jo Lenders followed at 9:25, Wil Wouters and Niels van Limpt at 23:57. Rene and Joyce van Eerd finished fourth, Ruud and Patricia Vollebregt fifth. The Greek crew of Varvakis and Kokkinos did not start and were assigned 6:28:25.
In the standings the margin has shrunk considerably. Wouters and Van Limpt are on 18:17:23, with De Vries and Lenders following at six minutes. Box and Box Jr. are third at 1:07:24, the Vollebregts fourth. With one stage to go, the overall lead could therefore still change on Saturday.
Quads and Rally Challenge
In the quad class Kenny van Eerd completed both stages in 4:02:00. Roy van Eerd failed to reach the finish of the second stage and received a penalty. In the standings Kenny leads with 25:10:57, Roy following at 5:57:10.
In the Rally Challenge the fastest time went to Adventure Tour rider Alan Stynes in 4:17:12, eighteen seconds ahead of Damien Fitzgerald. Nico Keijzer (Riding Adventures) was third in 4:26:50, including 4:15 of penalty time. Dave Ouwehand set the fifth time, Lars de Backker the sixth. Ann Moey was absent from the start list and is recorded as not started. No overall standings have been published for the Rally Challenge, even though only one day of racing remains.
Jury reduces penalties and revises the daily results
The jury has now provided clarity on the extra times that kept appearing in the results this week without explanation. The penalties are pulled automatically from the tracking system: fifteen minutes for each missed waypoint, both masked and open. For a deviation at the start of a special stage, the jury has reduced the penalty to five minutes.
That decision has been applied to a revised Friday result. Tomáš Racek, Robert Parry, Zsombor Egly and Ludovic Robion consequently went from fifteen to five minutes and Howard Standfield from thirty to twenty minutes. Noel Donnelly keeps his fifteen minutes. Racek therefore moves up to twelfth on the day, Parry to seventeenth.
At the time of writing, the published overall standings have not yet been recalculated and still reflect the old daily times. The standings in this report are therefore our own tally of the revised daily times. In them Parry moves up to fourth place with 18:06:45, ahead of Rymes and Van der Vlis, and Standfield climbs to sixteenth, pushing Plarina to seventeenth and Dekker to nineteenth. For Schans, eighth place remains intact.
Looking ahead: final stage over the Vertiskos
Saturday closes the rally with a 176-kilometre day. After a 27-kilometre connection to Nigrita, SS10 Vertiskos starts at 9:00, running 111 kilometres through the Vertiskos mountains between Serres and Thessaloniki. The final 38-kilometre connection then follows via Lithotopos and Lake Kerkini back to the Elpida Resort. The provisional result is expected around 15:00, with the prize-giving scheduled for 20:00.
Svitko, with an hour and a half in hand, looks assured of his seventh overall win in Serres. More interesting are the battles behind him: Parry, Rymes and Van der Vlis are within nine minutes of each other, and Schans can claim the M1 class. In the SSVs, 111 kilometres will decide the overall win between Wouters and Van Limpt and between De Vries and Lenders.
