'You need two perfect races to be World Champion' - Timmy Hansen.

PHOTO CREDIT: Red Bull Content Pool

Timmy Hansen heads to the penultimate round of the FIA World Rallycross Championship in Latvia this weekend and sets his sights on a perfect round to remain in contention for the title. 

History could favor the Swede, as former team-mate Sébastien Loeb won the inaugural event in 2016, and claimed two third-place finishes in 2017 and 2018. 

The Bikernieki National Sports Base (track) is a high-grip track, featuring more asphalt than gravel. The high-grip track surface will play into the strength of the Peugeot 208 WRX Supercar.

The 27-year-old Swede believes that Team Hansen MJP has ticked off their bad races this season. "Gravel is not our strong point with traction, but on high grip tracks, we do very well," he said. 

"The remaining rounds in Latvia and Cape Town are high grip tracks. Riga is nearly no gravel, South Africa is a brake late, high grip kind of track."

Hansen enjoys the high grip nature of the Riga and Cape Town tracks: "They are also two tracks that I really enjoy driving at - I kind of understand it. It's just me, I don't really need to think and just do."

Using his experience, the Swede aims to find his zone in pursuit of two perfect races that could bring him the 2019 FIA World Rallycross Championship.

"I am looking forward to the remaining rounds because it's not something that I have to overcome, I just need to find my zone and put it all together and try to drive clean. I think the key for me is not to think about the championship," he said. "There are no points for thinking about it, you just have to do two perfect races and that is what it takes to be world champion this year."

Timmy Hansen has claimed three wins thus far, but he has also had his share of bad luck after a crash at the opening round of the season with Andreas Bakkerud, and he was unable to go any further in Canada due to damage following an incident with Liam Doran and Timur Timerzyanov. 

Team Hansen MJP's rivals have made a big leap in start launches at recent events and these launches are key to track position.

"For us, the key moment is the launch and after that, the speed on the track that we have has been really good almost always," he adds. "We are going to work hard - I have already had a lot of engineers here this weekend coming together on the topic and we will see what we can do for the end of the year. We have a championship to win now - so we have to do something immediately."

TEXT - Junaid Samodien