Team Proton R3 finishes 5th at Sepang 1000km – S70 race car to appear at KLIMS 2024

With the debut of the newly-developed Proton S70 R3 race car, team Proton R3 managed to finish 5th in this year’s Sepang 1000 km race. Only car number 82 finished the race with Ariff Azmi and Alister Yoong behind the wheel.

In this year’s Sepang 1000 km race, team Proton R3 entered the Malaysian Touring Car (MTC) category with 2 cars – Proton S70 R3 number 81 and 82. Car number 81 was driven by Syafiq Ali and Fahrizal Hassan, but it unfortunately had to retire early due a technical issue.

Alister Yoong and Ariff Azmi also faced technical issues with car number 81 during the earlier part of the race and this cost them 40 minutes. Nonetheless, both young drivers fought back to finally finish 5th in the 1000 km race.

Proton Edar Chief Executive Officer, Roslan Abdullah said, “Team Proton R3, its drivers and the Proton S70 R3 have added to PROTON’s proud racing heritage by delivering a strong performance at the 2024 S1K race. While we targeted another overall win, the team was aware of the daunting task that lay ahead to compete with a brand new car against teams who had competed in races for the last three years and were much further ahead on the vehicle development curve.”

“Ultimately, we have no complaints although an accident early in the race caused the retirement of car 81 while a technical issue in car 82 caused it to lose time in the pits and dropped it out of overall contention. So, while the final result could have been better, a lot of data was collected over the weekend and finishing fifth in the MTC class has set a baseline for R3 to launch its assault on the 2025 racing season.”