Engine troubles for Proton

PROTON Motorsports emerged from the PRIME Yalta Rally with Ukrainian sporting heroes Oleksandr Saliuk Sr and Evgen Chervonenko on the podium in the latest round of the Ukrainian National Rally Championship, which finished yesterday.

Saliuk and Chervonenko had won the USSR Rally Championship title together 20 years earlier and, when Saliuk’s son broke his arm and was unable to take the start, Oleksandr wasted no time in asking his former co-driver to join him in a third factory PROTON Satria Neo S2000. This resurgence of one of the most fondly remember rallying partnerships caught the imagination of a nation and brought close to 250,000 fans to the Crimean coastline to cheer them on.

Saliuk didn’t put a wheel out of place as he raced through the sun-drenched and hugely entertaining Ai-Petri Mountain stages. Such was his performance, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych visited the PROTON Motorsports service area to meet representatives from the Malaysian manufacturer and members of the team. Yanukovych spent half an hour with the team, talking through various aspects of the sport and the rally.

The other two factory Satria Neo S2000s were driven by PROTON’s Intercontinental Rally Challenge regulars, P-G Andersson (Sweden) and Giandomenico Basso (Italy). Both had enjoyed a fruitful three-day test prior to the start of this fourth IRC round of the season – and the results of that test were clear to see. Both cars were running inside the top 10, with Basso up to fifth, and posting competitive times.

Unfortunately a puncture cost Andersson time on the fourth stage, with a similar issue hampering Basso one stage later, following a power steering problem. With those problem solved, the cars were soon back up to speed. Unfortunately, both cars hit engine trouble and retired on Friday.

While the IRC result might not have been the one the team had started the event aiming for, the PRIME Yalta Rally was an undoubted commercial success for the PROTON team. Beyond the sporting side of the event, the Malaysian manufacturer arrived on the shores of the Black Sea chasing recognition from the local fans. And PROTON Motorsports certainly did that. The Satria Neo S2000s were scarcely off the television screens or out of the sports sections of the newspapers. A further nod to the relationship developed between PROTON and the Ukraine came from the merchandise sales being completely unable to keep up with demand.

By Saturday afternoon, the yellow shirts of PROTON appeared to line this section of the Crimean coastline.

Oleksandr Saliuk Sr: “I have really enjoyed competing on this rally and working in the car with Evgen again. The car was very enjoyable to drive and it was great to see so many people out watching the rally at the side of the road – and to see so many people visiting our country and having such a good time. The atmosphere around the rally was really enjoyable and to come away with third place in our national championship was very satisfying.”

Giandomenico Basso: “This was a very difficult rally. All the time it was bumpy, bumpy and slippery. Some of the roads were going in and out of the forests and when we were under the trees, we didn’t know what was the grip going to be like: sometimes it would be okay, sometimes, there would be no grip at all. It was really hard to read the road. I would say this was quite an extreme asphalt rally, a real challenge. I was happy with where we were running: fifth place was nice and, at that point, we weren’t having any problems. In the third and fourth stages, the car felt very good, we could go quicker, everything was working. All the work the team had done on the car, you could feel it in those stages, but then we lost the power steering in the fifth stage, then got the puncture. It was not so nice, we could have made the good result here. But I am happy for the way the car was feeling before the trouble, the team is in the right way for the next event.”

P-G Andersson: “The handling and suspension of the car is so much better, we are definitely getting somewhere with the car. It’s always tough to retire from a rally, but we felt good at the start of this one. Like I thought, the stages were quite similar to what I had experienced in Bulgaria last year, with lots of mixed levels of grip. It wasn’t an easy rally at all. There were earth banks at the side of the road and, after it had rained a lot during the night, you could find some sections of mud where the rain had run out of the bank – these were really slippery. It was a tough rally, but there were lots of people out watching and plenty of them wearing the yellow of PROTON which was nice to see. We focus our attentions on Ypres next.”

Datuk Abdul Razak Dawood (Head of PROTON Motorsports): “We came here with the single objective of establishing the PROTON branding which was previously unheard of in the Ukraine. PROTON put up such a strong challenge against the more established European brands that we were pleasantly surprised to find every Ukrainian rally fan talking about the brand. There was further evidence of this in the enormous attention we received at the service park where almost all of our PROTON Motorsports merchandise and team t-shirts were snapped up by our new-found fans! Overall, the team had put up such an incredible performance with [Giandomenico] Basso running as high as fifth overall before mechanical problems put a serious dent on our aspirations. On the back of these unfortunate circumstances, we achieved our objectives of creating a very high awareness for PROTON and making it a desirable brand in the Ukraine.”

Chris Mellors (team principal): “Firstly, I have to say what a huge honour it was to receive the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in our service area during this event. He was a knowledgeable, interested and very welcome guest.

“This was a rally of highs and lows for us. Obviously, it was great to get Oleksandr and Evgen through and to see them finishing third in the Ukrainian Championship round. It was incredible to have these two legends of rallying in this part of the world in a PROTON for what has been the biggest rally their country has staged. Not only did they acquit themselves extremely well, but they also fired the imagination of the national media. I’ve never seen such complete coverage of a rally from both broadcast and print media. We have been made extremely welcome by the people of Ukraine and we’ve enjoyed the event. Obviously, we didn’t come away with the result we were hoping for from P-G [Andersson] and Giandomenico [Basso], but the silver lining here is the times both cars set. Clearly we’re getting there and we are very close to the competition now. Giandomenico was running fifth and might have had a look at fourth had we avoided the issues which stopped him. We’ve got some tweaks to make for the asphalt, so we’ll be back stronger and faster for Ypres.”