Proton upbeat on Rally Islas Canarias chances

Following its victorious double podium on the opening FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship round in Malaysia earlier this month, the PROTON Motorsports team returns to the Intercontinental Rally Challenge in Gran Canaria later this week.

This week’s Rally Islas Canarias El Corte Ingles will mark two-time FIA European Rally Champion Giandomencio Basso’s debut with the Malaysian manufacturer. And there couldn’t be a better time for the Italian rally star to be stepping aboard the Satria Neo S2000 following the team’s recent first and third on the Malaysian Rally.

The Satria Neo S2000 has undergone significant changes from last season and the Far Eastern outing was the first event for the new specification machine – and it proved unbeatable in the heat and humidity of the typically tough APRC opener.

The PROTON Motorsports team is aware that the IRC represents tougher competition, with the cream of Super 2000 rally cars and drivers descending on the Spanish island, which lies just 100 kilometres off the coast of Africa. This second round of the IRC is a step into the unknown for the Satria Neo S2000, Basso and his PROTON team-mate, double Junior World Rally Champion Per-Gunnar (P-G) Andersson. The two drivers have not competed there before and will be faced with a demanding second round of the IRC.

The Las Palmas-based event is packed into a near non-stop 24 hours of rallying, with the day one stages running into the night, followed by an early start the next morning. The pace through the smooth, but undulating asphalt stages will be fast and furious on the island.

As well as this being Basso’s debut event with the team, it will also be Andersson’s first time in the car on a pure asphalt rally. The Swede’s pedigree on sealed surface is beyond doubt, however, after he finished seventh on his debut in a Ford Focus RS WRC on last year’s World Rally Championship-qualifying Bulgaria Rally. Andersson’s last rally outing was even more impressive – he led the WRC opening Rally Sweden in February. Both drivers will be searching for solid points finishes on IRC round two later this week.

P-G Andersson: “The team is really pleased with the way the car is working after the changes we have made, so I’m looking forward to the event. Again, it’s been a little while since I was competing, my last event was on the snow of Rally Sweden where I finished seventh. The snow at home is quite different to what we’re going out to this week, though. I’ve heard a little bit about the stages, not too much. I hear they are quite fast, but undulating, we’ll see what happens. I like driving on asphalt and I have good confidence that the team has worked hard to make the car as competitive as we all want it to be, certainly Chris [Atkinson’s] win in Malaysia last week seems like a big step in the right direction. As well as that, having somebody with Giandomenico Basso’s ability on asphalt is going to help the team. He knows plenty about how to make the car work on this surface, so if we can get near to his times then we’re going to be happy.”

Giandomenico Basso: “I have not competed on this round of the IRC before, but I do have good memories of the IRC in Spain – I won the Rallye Principe de Asturias in 2008. This is a new challenge for me. I had a good test with the PROTON at home in Italy earlier this year. Since then, the team have made some changes with the car and I’m really looking forward to trying them before the start of the event. It’s good to be out competing again in the IRC, it’s a very strong championship and this week’s second round will, I’m sure, be a tough challenge.”

Chris Mellors (team principal): “Having seen the way the suspension changes improved the car on gravel, when we won last time out in Malaysia last month, we’re looking for a similar improvement with the car on asphalt. Due to time restrictions, we haven’t been able to run an extensive pre-event test, but both Giandomencio and P-G will get a full day tomorrow (Monday) to drive the car and establish their set-up for the event. As you can imagine, coming off the back of the result in the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, the team is really upbeat, but at the same time we have to remember that we haven’t been to this event before and we haven’t run the car in this new configuration on asphalt either. This weekend is going to be a very interesting one for us, but we know what our expectations are: getting both cars to the finish in the points would provide us with some very valuable data.”