Proton Motorsports ended last year’s Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC) on a high, clean sweeping all eight titles on offer. Now is the time for the team to defend its titles, as the 2012 APRC season kicks off in Rally of Whangarei in New Zealand.
Leading Proton’s charge in the Satria Neo S2000 is reigning APRC champ Alister McRae. The Scotsman will be joined by Proton’s SWRC driver PG Andersson. The Swede will be making his debut in the APRC. India’s Team MRF will be the main obstacle, with new Skoda Fabia S2000s driven by Gaurav Gill and Chris Atkinson. The latter drove for Proton last year.
“People tell me the APRC series is a lot about experience, which is a bit tough for me as New Zealand is the first time I’ve ever competed on one of these rounds. But I’m not going to let that slow me down. I’ve got a hugely competitive spirit – as all drivers have at this level. I want to win every rally and championship I enter and this is no different,” PG said.
Proton will also field reigning 2WD APRC champion Karamjit Singh and defending APRC junior champion Akira Bamba in the Proton Cusco Rally Team 1600cc Satria Neo.
Joining the pair is Kenneth Koh, who is appearing in his first international rally in the 2WD APRC category. Koh won last year’s 2WD Malaysian Rally Championship and is also the MRC junior champion.
To run over the weekend, Rally of Whangarei is divided into 16 special stages over a competitive distance of 283.28 km. Tomorrow’s Leg 1 consists of eight stages including a 1.5 km super special. The remaining eight SS will be run on Sunday.
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2nd photo …. is kind of proud seeing Proton line up alongside big name like Evo and we are actually the reigning Champ … i know i will be bashed putting this line of comment …
why should anyone be bashing you? maybe a few lancer owner will. haha…
Nothing to bash. I’ve stopped bashing proton since about a year ago. Sure they’re not perfect but not bad enough to bash any more.
Plus their rally results are nothing short of impressive. I’m just curious why they have yet to capitalize on this and release a turbocharged version yet… That Artiga isn’t for sale right?
The real rallying contender in Rally New Zealand are now Satria Neo and Skoda Fabia. Those Evos and Imprezza are just ancient rallying machine.
The Citroen DS3 R3 is also there. And these are all new generation rally cars..
Tentu Satria Neo akan menang lagi ! Neo is the best car proton ever produce so far.
lacer, subaru, evo, lancer, subaru evo, lancer subaru evo.. then suddenly… satria neo.. waw.. i like..
Neo, you make us Proud !!
Well the S2000 Proton team is doing, last year overall champs OK, too many titles won great for show….it begs the question why did they win??..im a sports fan im sure many of you are too, we should actually be curios on how a team can be so successful..what are the reason for their success….like in EPL these days having the biggest budget help masively to propel a team to the upper echelons of the league like man city but some team breaks this norm and achieve by making sound investments and having a football philosophy and sticking to it and allowing it to mature like swansea or even man utd
Back to the Proton S200 team, if you all must know they were the team with the biggest pockets in the APRC 2011. In motorsports generally the biggest spenders usually wins. Anyone remember why Ferrari were so succesfull in the early 2000’s?..yeah they had a freakishly good driver and match made in heaven of a management team but all of the success wold not have come so easily if it was not because of their extremely deep pockets. For those who dont know, they spent more tham 4 times than the team who finished in 3rd in the standings. And we are talking of hundreds of millions here.
Im not a Proton basher, in fact I am proud of their achievements even tough they had it easy due to their enormous budget. As the old saying goes, to Finnish first, you first have to Finnish!
Well done Proton, show us what you are made off in the big league this year!!
It is not just a matter of spending more money than others.
For most of the APRC events (until this year with the participation of Fabia S2000), Proton was the only team with S2000 cars, competing against Group N production cars (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, Subaru Impreza etc.).
This is more like a Premier League club against Football League Championship clubs (though this too, is not so accurate, because WRC cars should be the analogue of Premier League in rallying).
If anyone thinks I am bashing Proton, then it is obvious that you are just blindly supporting a team and not loving the sport enough!
Having said that, I am really impressed with what they have gone through so far. This reminds me of being a Skoda fan back then (04-05 seasons) when Skoda was being trashed by almost everyone else because it was possibly the most unreliable WRC cars back then, and yet I don’t mind people criticising the team for being unorganised and that the technicians were really inefficient.
there’s a whole bunch of crazy eyed evos just trembling to beat the proton. Most or all of them will fail.. Muahahahaha…
the Yellow NA beat all the turbo’s..well done Proton for precious S2000..
Now this is a super car; congrates Proton Malaysia…
You should produce this car as production car..
Can teach all those German wannabe and Jap looser what is a good car is..
Why?
Coz you number 1 top seller in Malaysia..
Coz you know what your citizen wants…
We thank you for giving us cheap/reliable and good car..
Come on Proton; lets teach others some lesson!