Kevin Hansen may have overcame illness to win his second consecutive TitansRX event, but his stiffest challenge came in the shape of title rival Topi Heikkinen.
Hansen made the better start of the two in the final, but Heikkinen remained on his bumper, pressuring for the race win until there was contact on the start of the penultimate lap which sent Heikkinen into the air and then out of podium contention.
However, despite the dramatic appearance of the incident, Hansen had no idea of the severity of the hit from inside the car, and kept his cool to calmly take the win and extend his points lead.
„I had a tough start to the weekend,“ Hansen said of his road to the final. „I drove well all day, I had my rhythm, I knew where I could go faster, but in all the qualis I didn’t push 100 percent because I didn’t want to extract everything from my body because I haven’t been eating so much and I know I don’t have the massive energy storage I need.“
After powering through the heats and his semi-final, Hansen knew he had to pull out all the stops to defeat fellow front-row starter Heikkinen in the final.
„In the final I saw Topi on the right side and he’s difficult to beat if you’re not ahead of him from the beginning,“ he said. „I made a really really good start and when I was ahead of him after turn one I said ’now we give it all‘.“
„I did make one mistake when he got close, I closed the door into turn one and he hit me quite badly, and I didn’t see how bad he hit me but I heard he was up in the air,“ he added. „I managed to escape then had two more nice laps to grab one more win.“
Building up to the contact Heikkinen had been hounding Hansen all race, with the pair coming together when the Finn made a bold attempt to pass for the lead going into turn one of the sixth lap.
„He was bumping me in turn one for all of the laps and giving me a small nudge,“ said Hansen. „That one was a bit closer, I think he took more risk to try and overtake and I think he had to pay the price to be that aggressive.“
„I just just had my line and felt a big hit, and then it felt so heavy. I thought I had broken the tyre, but then it felt lighter and lighter, then I went.“
„Once I didn’t see him behind, I saw Andrew, then I knew he wasn’t as aggressive as Topi so I could be a bit more relaxed and push to the end for a really really nice final to end a really cool day.“
