FIA World Rallycross Championship bronze medallist Kevin Hansen scored Team Hansen’s first podium of the 2020 season, finishing in second place in the final of the second round of the year.
Starting fourth in the final, Kevin remained patient after his first lap joker left him running where he had started at the halfway mark.
A bold move around the outside of Robin Larsson exiting the velodrome gave Kevin third place on lap five, which became second when Johan Kristoffersson was given a five-second penalty for a track marker infringement.
Kevin and his brother, reigning World Rallycross Champion Timmy Hansen, had contrasting fortunes throughout Sunday. While Kevin wasn’t able to repeat his Q1 race win from Saturday he did set top-five times in all three rounds of qualifying, then scored a commanding second place en-route to the final.
Timmy qualified ninth and in his semi-final, he was on the receiving end of contact on his way into the joker on the first lap. That cost him precious time and dropping him to last place.
Timmy bounced back quickly to move into fourth, one position off a place in the final. With everything on the line Timmy made an attempt to take second place which unfortunately led to contact and dropped him to fifth. Race stewards then elected to remove Timmy from the semi-final results.
Kevin’s second place promoted him to fourth place in the drivers’ championship race, and Team Hansen reinforced its second place in the teams’ championship with another strong haul of points. Defending champion Timmy heads to the next round in Finland seventh in the drivers’ standings.
The 2020 season has only just begun but Team Hansen’s next event is less than a week away, as World RX heads to Finland for rounds three and four of the championship on August 29-30.
Timmy qualified ninth and in his semi-final, he was on the receiving end of contact on his way into the joker on the first lap. That cost him precious time and dropping him to last place.
Timmy bounced back quickly to move into fourth, one position off a place in the final. With everything on the line Timmy made an attempt to take second place which unfortunately led to contact and dropped him to fifth. Race stewards then elected to remove Timmy from the semi-final results.
Kevin’s second place promoted him to fourth place in the drivers’ championship race, and Team Hansen reinforced its second place in the teams’ championship with another strong haul of points. Defending champion Timmy heads to the next round in Finland seventh in the drivers’ standings.
The 2020 season has only just begun but Team Hansen’s next event is less than a week away, as World RX heads to Finland for rounds three and four of the championship on August 29-30.
Quotes
“My grid positions for all three qualifying races were from grid positions on the outside lane and I ended up in traffic during every lap today. That meant I wasn’t able to drive at my own pace.
“I struggled with some technical issues and had some difficulty getting the right balance with my set-up. I know the car is good and I believe we have a package that is able to win races. We will work hard with the team this week and hopefully arrive in Finland with new hopes of success.
“I’m very happy for Kevin. He put in a strong performance which earned him a deserved second place. His speed today was good from the beginning and it rewarded us with a first podium for the team this season.”
“I felt very good today, so I really hoped we could bring home a podium finish. I knew if we put it together, were smart and focused on ourselves, we’d be able to pull it off.
“We all deserved a podium for our hard work and how we improved during the weekend as a team. We have a completely new crew of mechanics and they really deserve this podium after all the work they have done after this very long break. I’m happy for them that I was able to secure the result.”
“We made some good adjustments in areas like the car balance, but it’s not enough yet. We have some ideas for the next round in Kouvola. Timmy was very unfortunate with his starting positions today and overtaking is never easy.”
“I really missed the fans on the podium today. I was driving for them but it felt quite empty without the fans watching trackside. And I was thinking a lot about my grandfather, Thord, who passed away just before the World RX season finale last year. He never missed a race and this podium was for him. I really miss him.”
“I think we adapted very well today. Kevin got into a good rhythm and his pace was very stable, pushing really hard. We weren’t completely on the pace today but once we make some small adjustments, we’ll be there. We continued to learn the upgrades we’d developed and tested; we didn’t quite get that right yesterday but today we started going in the right direction. I’m quite sure Timmy will be back at the front next weekend, especially as he struggled a bit with having to start on the outside for every race today, which isn’t easy.
“We expected to have slightly better pace from the start but we’ve seen some small things in the car which changed its behaviour quite a lot. We also know that while Höljes is a home track for our team, it’s also traditionally been quite a difficult one for us over the years. It will be very interesting to try this car in Finland, to see how well it works around Kouvola, how much speed we can gain there and how close we can be to the Volkswagen and Audis, with the hope that we’ll really give them a fight next week.
