Motorsport provides a rare opportunity in the sports world; a platform where men and women compete head-to-head without segregation. If the car is up to scratch compared to rivals, the driver can make the difference, no matter their gender. And in no form of motorsport is that more apparent than rallycross. Much of Hansen Motorsport’s 30 years of success is down to Susann Hansen, who co-founded the team with Kenneth Hansen in 1990. 30 years on as team manager, she is responsible for ensuring the race team runs like clockwork at the track, and is overseeing the team’s long-term sustainability push. During those 30 years, she’s been breaking new ground for women in motorsport. “Being a role model was never a mission of mine,” says Susann. “I suppose I have been a role model in some way but I didn’t put it on paper as something I wanted to achieve. It just happened. I was so driven in wanting to do what I wanted, and it just ended up like that.” For someone who didn’t set out to be a trailblazer in a male-dominated sport, she broke several boundaries. Becoming a champion behind the wheel Before the introduction of the world championship in 2014, European Rallycross was the top-level series. Between the first European series being founded in 1973 and today’s world championship, top-level rallycross has had only one female champion: Susann Hansen. Like many Scandinavians, Susann began her racing career in folkrace at 18 years old, where the cars are cheap and easy to maintain. A key rule in folkrace is the cars can be bought by any competitor for a fixed fee, to stop drivers overspending to make their cars too quick. Her family team’s budgets were limited, yet she was sufficiently quick that rivals kept buying the car shared between her and her father. It was time to switch to rallycross. The Volvo 140s of folkrace were traded for a Volvo 240. The step up posed a difficult challenge; with money for parts hard to come by, Susann’s form was mixed. By 1988 she was in an all-female category in the Swedish national championship, but there were problems holding her back. “That was our biggest competitor: money,” explains Susann. “We couldn’t afford to buy rain tyres, so the events it was raining, you can imagine it wasn’t so easy. I just had to hope it wasn’t going to rain! If it didn’t it went quite well. If not…not so easy! We didn’t have enough to spend to be really good.” “I finished something like between fourth and eighth in the end. So not very successful!” “It was more about driving for the enjoyment of participating in the racing, being part of the community and the social life it brings. There was no real ambition because we knew from the start it wouldn’t be possible to win. It was about enjoying racing, having a barbecue and going home.” Meeting Kenneth Hansen in 1989 brought change. Together they founded the team that would become the most successful in rallycross history: Hansen Motorsport. With a bigger budget and a slick racing operation behind her – one where she was in charge as much outside the car as inside it – her career began to take off. “Kenneth believed in me more than I believed in myself!” says Susann. “He encouraged me, pushed me, was really positive and did everything he could to help and support me. “Race by race I found driving even more enjoyable. With good feedback I learned more and more, improving my understanding of how to handle the car rather than depending on instinct. “What made it work was us putting in the long hours together, working nights and weekends in the workshop when we needed to, building the cars and also the more boring bits!” By the time Susann had reached the European championship, she was a working mother, as Timmy had been born just over a year earlier. Race track duties involved more than the standard team operations; Susann and Kenneth were raising Timmy at the racetrack. Susann’s life had changed away from racing, and it was changing at the track too; Hansen Motorsport had joined forces with Citroën in 1993, giving Susann an opportunity to compete in the best equipment available for the first time in her career. While Kenneth drove the mid-sized ZX in Division 2, Susann got a brand new AX for the ERA 1400 Cup, one of the three divisions of the European championship at the time. Now equipped with the right tools, she went to work showing what she could really do behind the wheel. “You never know where you are in the competitive order when you start a new series. And this time around I wasn’t only in a class against women; it was 95% men, against me and a couple of other women. “I knew it would be difficult to win but I did everything I could.” Wins at Lousada in Portugal and Lyngås in Norway put her in a three-way title fight at the Buxtehude season finale. A maximum points haul in Germany moved her past fellow AX driver Manfred Beck in the last race of the season, becoming the first female driver to win a European Rallycross title in the process. Calling the shots A year on from her European success, with budgets tightening once more. Susann shifted from driving a car to driving the team forward as its manager. “After ’95, I said I wanted to stop driving. It was my own decision because I felt I’d accomplished what I wanted to. I had a dream of racing on the international stage, and I had done that and even won the championship. So I was satisfied with what I’d done. “Taking that decision wasn’t difficult because I knew I’d still be involved with the team, working in a competitive environment. And I really looked forward to that new role. “There was much more potential with what we could achieve with Kenneth driving. As a woman, it might seem strange to say that. But I felt I had proved my point. I was good, but he was better! So we focused our resources on his car.” With Susann calling the shots from the paddock, Kenneth went on to score 14 European titles behind the wheel. And during those seasons, she was pushing to do things differently. “I said we should start using data logging to improve our competitiveness. I made a point to learn how to manage the data logging myself, reading the manual from page one to page 191 or whatever it was! The Citroën Sport engineers taught me the basics, enough to analyse our starts and find how to improve.” There was very little Susann wouldn’t be doing on a race weekend. From orchestrating the mechanics to data analysis, advising Kenneth on his driving, team logistics, driving the team truck, and even writing press releases – all with a very young Timmy and Kevin in tow – she kept Hansen Motorsport running. “Timmy said to me once that in those years, I had the job of 12 people!” Being an inspiration She started out in motorsport with the same attitude as everyone else, simply trying to make the best of it in a competitive environment. But in truth, she’s built a legacy that goes beyond winning a European 1400 Cup title “If I have inspired or encouraged any women to join in motorsport I would be really happy. It’s a really interesting world; there are so many roles you can do – driving, managing, engineering, for example – and it’s innovative and competitive. “If it’s in an international series you get to meet a lot of new people, see lots of new places and experience new cultures. It’s an inspiring world with inspiring jobs.” Rallycross also provides the best platform in motorsport for men and women to compete equally, as Susann explains. “It’s a natural place for women to be. It’s a modern sport of sorts; other disciplines are a bit older than ours, so they have built up traditions over the years, which might create a fixed perception of how things should be done. “In rallycross, everything has grown a little bit differently. There are maybe fewer unspoken rules and expectations. That helps. Rallycross was also a smaller discipline in the beginning, which has opened up the possibility of doing things differently as it has grown.” Who will follow in Susann’s footsteps? We don’t know yet, but we can’t wait to find out.