Hansen Motorsport’s dynamic new #YellowSquad junior rallycross team made an impressive RX2e winning debut at the World RX of Norway, with 22-year-old Swedish driver Isak Sjökvist taking victory in the opening round of the 2023 series and stable-mate Catie Munnings scoring her maiden RX2e heat race win in the sister car.
And it’s hoping to repeat that performance at the team’s home event – this weekend’s World RX of Sweden in Höljes.
“It’s a new level – I don’t need to say more,” said Sjökvist about #YellowSquad, after the pole-sitter won the RX2e final from lights to flag and take an early series lead.
And that comment will please team principal Kevin Hansen and his brother Timmy, #YellowSquad’s driver coach, for a ‘new level’ is exactly what the Hansen World RX Team drivers are aiming to create.
#YellowSquad is no ordinary junior subsidiary team, as the Hansen’s have hand-picked all the elements that they believe are needed to provide a platform for young aspiring rallycross drivers to learn the necessary skills to progress up the FIA World Rallycross Championship ladder. And they haven’t stopped there – adding all their current expertise to create an all-encompassing, stand-out, colourful, energic and all-electric driver development team package.
The Hansen’s only want drivers with the dedication, ambition, talent and potential to go right to the very top to race for #YellowSquad. Being media savvy, having a positive personality and boasting a burning desire to make the most of absolutely everything #YellowSquad has to offer are also crucial – so you can see why Sjökvist and Munnings tick the team’s boxes.
“YellowSquad is designed exclusively for young drivers who are our future,” explains Kevin Hansen.
“We created the team because we wanted to build a junior team while Timmy and I were still racing and can contribute our current experience and not wait until we retire.
“That is the foundation of #YellowSquad – to have a great race team where drivers can have a great set-up around them, have a great crew with top engineers and have everything they need to maximise their performance. We want to create the best place for getting young drivers onto the World RX stage.
“This next step with RX2e and junior drivers has been our ambition since we began with electric rallycross.
“We’re doing something different – building the next generation.
“The team philosophy has a lot of energy, it’s versatile and it’s about standing out and having a personality – that’s what we want to create and it’s great that it is finally here.
“We run the RX2e cars in our workshop and operate everything fully in house and take care of them between races. We make sure that the cars are spot on because we want the drivers to feel that when they come to a race weekend it’s their car, they know that it has been prepped one hundred percent and that they have trust in the mechanics.
“We want to create the best place for getting young drivers onto the World RX stage and giving them everything that they need to move up to the next level.
“We want to teach them when they are young, because when you get to World RX there is more people and more pressure, and you need to know where you sit as a driver in that large organisation.”
#YellowSquad is also helping Patrick O'Donovan. The 19-year-old Irishman won two RX2e rounds in 2022 – and whilst he’s racing his own family-run Peugeot 208 WRX in this year’s Euro RX1, his profile and potential fits the Hansen’s junior team’s values.
“All our operations now are fully electric,” adds Kevin.
“We don’t operate any of the Euro RX1 cars. We support Patrick because he’s a great driver, he’s young, he’s full of energy, he’s a character and he wants to achieve something great in his career. That’s what we love, and we want to support that.
“We don’t want to run petrol cars any more. As a team we are focused on promoting electrification and preparing young drivers for the best way possible for World RX and that is to race in RX2e, so all our operations in motorsport now is electric.
“We are coming from 2022 when we were completely carbon neutral, so this is a great step in the right direction for us to reduce our current emissions to get closer to net zero and on top of that to have the greatest drivers for our future team.”
