PROTON dominate day one in Queensland

The PROTON R3 Rally Team enjoyed a day of near-dominance on the opening day of the International Rally of Queensland, round four of the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship.

Queenslander Chris Atkinson led the Asia-Pacific event from the start and was never headed throughout today’s opening loop of gravel stages, as the PROTON driver turned in his strongest drive up until the eighth test. In the 35-kilometre stage, Atkinson suffered a spin early in the test, but was still more than half a minute ahead of his nearest rival. Unfortunately for Atkinson, worse was to come as he plunged the Satria Neo S2000 into a river crossing later in the stage. The water was deeper than expected and the car drowned out having ingested so much water.

The Satria refused to fire up, forcing the distraught leader into retirement. He will restart tomorrow under the superally regulations.

The good news for PROTON is that Atkinson’s team-mate Alister McRae had been equally dominant in the APRC standings, but the Scotsman’s charge had been stymied by two punctures. McRae closed proceedings with fastest times on the day’s final two stages to close the gap to the APRC leader to just 4.8 seconds. McRae has his first maximum APRC score firmly in his sights tomorrow.

A mark of PROTON’s consistent dominance of this fourth APRC round is that the two Satria Neo S2000s were tied for first place after the fourth stage, with the Malaysian flying machines quickest on nine of the 10 tests run so far.

The second day of the event includes a further eight stages, before the rally finishes in Imbil at 1530 local time.

Chris Mellors (team principal) said:
“Today has been PROTON’s day. Fastest on virtually every stage, leading through all but two of the stages, it’s been a good event so far. Obviously, it could, and probably should, have been a one-two for PROTON at the end of day one, but that’s the way this sport runs sometimes. The pace the cars have shown has been fantastic and Alister’s right there and would have been comfortably ahead if he hadn’t had two punctures. Tomorrow we’re focused on setting more fastest times and collecting our first APRC win of the season. We’ve got the fastest car here and now we want to capitalise on that.”