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Hansen trying to revive team after Peugeot World Rallycross exit

Fourteen-time European Rallycross champion Kenneth Hansen is working on reviving his team for the 2019 World RX Championship.

Running as the works-assisted Peugeot Hansen operation from 2014-17, Hansen's squad won the '15 RX teams' title.

When Peugeot turned it into a full factory team for 2018, he stayed on as team manager.

Peugeot announced in October that it was ending its works RX programme, and Hansen admitted: "it didn't take so many minutes" when he learned of that decision "before you start to reconsider what is possible now".

He added: "Rallycross is our passion and the thing we are best at."

The Hansen family had already been working on plans for a satellite rallycross programme with their own team, which did not run cars in 2018, before the Peugeot decision.

That idea has now been escalated into trying for a full World RX effort, with wife Susann and sons Timmy and Kevin all involved.

"We have been in the top of rallycross for many years and to only focus on a national championship or European championship is not so motivating," said Hansen.

"We target to go in the world championship. Of course with the shortage of time before next year it's definitely not easy, but we are trying at least."

He is aiming to run a two-car 2019 World RX team.

"That's most efficient and it's not too big - it's quite controllable to do it and you can do it in a quite clever way to do it cost-efficiently, but also performance-efficient," Hansen explained.

"If VW stays as a manufacturer it's more or less impossible to beat them as a private team, but that makes the challenge very, very motivating also."

Hansen is currently in talks with Peugeot Sport about running ex-works 208 Supercars in the series next year, as his 2016-18 driver Sebastien Loeb had also been.

"It makes no sense for them to keep the cars, so it would be better to have them on the grid somewhere, so let's see if it can be in our team," said Hansen, who ran cars from Peugeot's sister brand Citroen from 1993 to 2014.

"We know the car, we know the technology very well so it's the easiest way to be competitive."

Zdroj: autosport.com