Tuesday, 31 August 2021

The Hansens aim to keep winning streak alive.

PHOTO CREDIT: Red Bull Content Pool
The Hansen World RX Team looks to continue their winning streak, as the World Championship rolls into northern France this weekend. 

A near-perfect start to the season has seen the Swedish squad become the first team ever to take two consecutive one-two finishes in the FIA World Rallycross Championship. 

Championship leader Timmy Hansen and Kevin Hansen have one win apiece, while the team is already 40 points ahead of its nearest rival in the teams’ standings.

But there’s no time for the team or its drivers to rest on its laurels – less than two weeks since the last round in Sweden, they’re back at the team’s second-home in Lohéac to try and keep the winning streak alive.

PHOTO CREDIT: Red Bull Content Pool
Just six points behind older brother Timmy, Kevin Hansen has one goal in mind this weekend, and it's to reclaim the championship. 

"My goal this weekend is clear – I want to get the lead of the championship back. I feel like the circuit suits me and suits the car but as we saw in Sweden, the grid draw makes such a huge difference. It's the main reason I am not tied on points with Timmy right now. And annoyingly this is the one thing I can’t control," Kevin Hansen said. "So I will cross my fingers, my toes, my arms, my eyes if I have to, everything – my grid positions in qualifying last time were terrible and I don’t want to go through that again!

"It’s best to focus on the positives though and we have lots of those. Our speed at Höljes shows that our car seems to be competitive everywhere on all surfaces. And my confidence is really high – not only from the feeling the 208 has given me so far this year".

The Hansen's have exclusively used French cars at the top level of rallycross – both in World RX and Euro RX before it – since the 1993 season. The team’s 17 World RX victories and three world titles have all been achieved with a Peugeot 208 WRX.

Timmy Hansen currently holds the lap record around Lohéac, having set a 35.843s (laptime) on World RX’s last visit to France in 2019. 

"This is one of my favourite tracks on the calendar – maybe it helps that our car has always performed well here but it’s a nice circuit regardless. It’s really old-school but also quite a fast track – there are not many technical corners on the lap aside from a final couple of turns, where lacking precision with your inputs costs a lot of lap time," Timmy Hansen said.

The 2019 World Champion admits that the real difference this year is reliability and consistency. 

"It is easy to focus on how fast each team and driver is but what has really made a difference so far this year is reliability and consistency. It’s important we don’t lose sight of that," he said. "Getting to the finish line is not always a guarantee but everyone in the team has done a superb job of making sure we’ve finished every race without problems so far this season. I believe that will end up being a key factor when we get to the end of the season.

"I am the reigning winner here so of course, the target has to be to go out and do the same thing again. Let’s wait and see what happens but I’m optimistic that I will be competitive this weekend."

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