Mellors keen on giving Cronin more Proton runs

28th August 2010

By Charlie Contadeli

Proton team boss Chris Mellors is ready to hand Keith Cronin another run in his factory-blessed Satria Neo Super 2000, despite the Irishman crashing into retirement on the penultimate stage of the opening leg of Barum Czech Rally Zlin earlier today.

Cronin, who was driving the Proton in competition for the first time, had set two consecutive top seven times only to crash out within a kilometre of the finish of stage eight of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge event, which is taking place in wet and slippery conditions.

Following Cronin’s exit, Mellors said: “We’re always looking for young talent and it’s been great to work with him. It was nice to give him an opportunity and I don’t blame him by any means for going off because it was one of those things. It was just great that somebody was giving the ball a kick and pushing it to the limit. For sure he could be in the car again.”

To add to Proton’s disappointment, Niall McShea retired the second Satria Neo with a mechanical glitch on Saturday’s final stage.

Meanwhile, there were no such problems for Skoda, whose factory driver Jan Kopecky will take a lead of almost half a minute heading into the final day of asphalt rally, although the battle behind is extremely close.

Freddy Loix became the fifth different driver to win a stage on the rally by topping the times through Saturday’s final test, the repeat of the 29.09-kilometre Trojak stage in his works Fabia. Loix’s speed through the rain-hit stage moved him from firth into second, 28.2s behind Czech hero Kopecky heading into Sunday’s final eight stages. Bryan Bouffier is third in a Peugeot 207.