Kevin Hansen was pleased to come away from Austria still at the top of the points table despite not winning a round for the first time since the first weekend of the season in France.
The Swede was on target to take top qualifying spot in round eight on Sunday – which would have put him in a prime position to take the event win – until an electrical issue forced him to retire from Q3.
Nevertheless, he rallied back to finish on the podium, maintaining his perfect run of top-three finishes over the course of the season. It’s an enviable record, but Hansen was also left rueing the missed opportunity that he could have had if he’d topped qualifying.
“I’m quite satisfied,” Hansen said at the end of the event at the MJP Arena. “I can’t be disappointed with two podiums.”
“So far in every race I’ve been on the podium so that’s really good but I felt like I had a lot more potential this weekend,” he continued. “I could have won yesterday if I had taken some of the opportunities that I had got, and also today with the problem (in qualifying) I think it set us back in track position.
“This is rallycross, sometimes you have the weekend to win, but then there’s a twist and then it’s not your weekend. Overall I’ve been happier at other times but I’m not disappointed.”
The two-time event winner was under no illusions that a perfect qualifying run would have led to an easy win in the final, but he had no doubt that it would have helped him a great deal.
“I don’t think I would have won easily but I think we could have had some track position – starting on the front row in the semi would have been a bit easier,” he said. “I had to push a lot which is why I was able to be fast, I really tried to push and get the car working.”
“Then in the final I couldn’t get it really right in the long gravel turn and Topi overtook me there so I think I was maybe too strong in the beginning and then I didn’t have that final edge in the end.”
