ChrisB wrote:1800 based engine? If you mean the old Clio engine, then yes. They talk of engine improvement, but it still is the same engine as last year. A new engine homologation was not planned for and by now could only be done by the rules with a 1.6T, which means a complete new engine.
As far as i can see it, they can make changes to the engine but they can't change the base engine if that makes sense. Proton have definitely made changes to the current engine they use; they seem to have cured the reliability problems and made some kind of step on performance although PG said he didn't notice much difference.
For me, Canarias was Proton's best performance yet in IRC. Importantly both cars ran reliably to the finish and Basso's times were consistent and not too slow. He was always within around 1s/km of the leaders which I think is no mean feat when you know the resoruces MEM have compared to Skoda and Peugeot.
How much of the improvement was down to the car and how much to Basso is hard to say. I doubt there are many faster drivers than Basso on this kind of event. He completely dominated his team mate here who has been a works WRC driver.
I guess those Reiger shock absorbers are having a knock on affect on the reliability, Chris Atkinson made that point during the Malaysian Rally that if less bad shocks are being transmitted to the car then that puts the other components under less stress too.