Britain's Guy Wilks has said he will be able to take many positives away the recent Belgium Ypres Rally, despite his failure to finish.

Wilks, who was giving Proton's Satria Neo Super 2000 its debut in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, retired on the opening day of the event following a crash.

However, the two-time British Rally champion said the fact he was as high as eleventh on the car's first proper event suggested the Proton has a huge amount of potential.

Indeed he has already turned his attentions to the next round of the series, Rally Russia, which runs from July 9-11.

"I'm disappointed and the whole of the Proton team is that we weren't able to finish and get the mileage in the car we were looking for," said Wilks.

"The Proton had been really well received by the IRC fans and they were brilliant helping us to get back on the road after our accident.

"I'm already thinking ahead to Rally Russia now though. We always knew it was going to be difficult against the more experienced teams here. But we know what we have got to do.

“Given time and testing and some data to compare our performance against the others we'll be right up there."