15-year-old Karting star Kobe Pauwels from Belgium will make his RallyX Nordic this season in the Crosskart class this season alongside Red Bull Belgium and Hansen Motorsport backed LifeLive Nordic initiative.
Pauwels is ready to take his career to the next level as he is joining the ever-growing Crosskart class. He has recently been active in the Belgian Junior Championship and the European Crosskart Championship last year, where he took part in selected rounds to have the first taste of what it is like to drive the rear-wheel-drive Crosskart machinery.
“Last year, I entered some races with LifeLive so we could both be fully prepared for this season, the team and I got on well from the start and everything seemed to click, so there was no hesitation about working together.” Pauwels said.
“The chassis was being developed last season and it got better as the year progressed so we are sticking with it for 2020, and I will push as hard as I can to achieve the best possible results for both myself and the team, who are working really hard.”
“The level in RallyX Nordic is clearly extremely high. We’ve been following the series for a while now, so I know who will be fast and who to keep my eye on – and I will of course try to beat them! I’m just really excited to get started on the new season.“
“I’m not expecting an easy year ahead, so I’d just like to gain lots of experience and we’ll take things race-by-race and see how it develops. I don’t think we can expect to win the championship in our first year, but let’s wait and see how things go in the opening round at Höljes. I’d like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to LifeLive, Red Bull Belgium, Ardeca Lubricants and all of the sponsors for making this possible.” Pauwels added.
Before he decided to make his career step-up, he was taking part in Karting on international level. He finished as the runner-up in the CIK-FIA Karting Academy back in 2018.
He will now do Crosskart this season alongside being a factory driver for Birel in Karting.
Kenneth Hansen has founded the Hansen Motorsport backed LifeLive Nordic programme and they are the official distributor for the brand in Scandinavian and Nordic markets. With this new programme, the team is hoping to attract more drivers to enter the Crosskart series in the future.
“LifeLive Nordic perfectly complements our existing rallycross programmes and commitments, we started the co-operation more than a year ago, beginning with a lot of testing and development, and I actually raced the car myself at Höljes. We worked very hard to extract more performance from it and feel it is now at a sufficiently competitive level.” Hansen said.
“Kobe is very young, but he clearly has potential. What he needs is experience and a positive learning environment in which to gain that experience, and that is what we will provide. It’s also great to see drivers from different countries entering RallyX Nordic – hopefully Kobe will be the first of many.”
