Timmy Hansen has described finishing second in the first ever all-electric round of the FIA World Rallycross Championship as a “very good result” both for himself and the entire Hansen World RX Team, but admits there is a lot to work on as the championship progresses.
Looking back on the first outing for these cars, the 2019 world champion was very reflective: “For sure there is a lot to go home and work on, but it was a good weekend. In the semi-final and especially the final I thought inside the car I had a problem, I nearly spun a couple of times.”
Despite this, he feels the team has started very strongly, saying “through qualifying we showed really good pace, that’s so nice when we have built these cars back home in the workshop and it showed we made the right decisions and we are there fighting at the front.”
Team owner, rallycross legend Kenneth Hansen, was similarly optimistic: “I’m proud of having taken not only our team, but also world rallycross as a sport to a ground-breaking new electric era. In summary of this historic weekend we are happy that the cars worked well, we had nothing major go wrong, we are still learning a lot about the setup and of course at the end it was good with a podium for Timmy – that was very successful.”
Like all the teams in this years new RX1e class, Hansen was not totally comfortable in the car all weekend. Indeed, event winner Johan Kristoffersson went so far as to describe the weekend as “extremely disappointing” due to the amount of work that all the teams obviously still need to do to the cars.
However, this is where experience really counted this weekend. Kristoffersson and Hansen were both able to use their championship winning experience and ensure that they finished very well, securing first and second position, and teeing up a competitive rivalry which will hopefully last all season.
