Hansen Motorsport narrowly avoided missing their first ever World Rallycross race last month in Finland when CE Dealer Team came in clutch to give Kevin and Timmy Hansen rides. Unfortunately, lightning couldn’t strike twice and the brothers are unable to run this weekend’s season-ending round in Turkey.

While certainly a disappointing way to end the World RX era, Kevin has still been busy in the meantime. Over the week, he was in Spain at the Nasser Racing Camp to try his hand at the Apache APH-03.

The APH-03 is a hybrid Challenger car developed by Apache Automotive that finished 34th in class at its Dakar Rally debut in January with Antoine Meo. Yannick Panagiotis, who was also at the camp, finished 11th in the Baja Aragón with his APH-03 in July.

Others at the test included Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky, Marion Andrieu, Christina Dobloug, Agnė Telyčėnaitė. Åhlin-Kottulinsky and Hansen have competed against each other in Extreme E.

Kevin is no stranger to rally raid. In 2020, he entered the Andalucía Rally in an OT3 fielded by Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team. With François Cazalet as navigator, he finished second in T3 behind teammate Mitch Guthrie.

Although a solid finish for a first-timer, Kevin hasn’t returned to the discipline since but continues to follow races like the Dakar Rally as a fan from afar.

In a January episode of the Hansen Brothers Podcast, he and Timmy discussed the difficulties of getting into rally raids. Timmy opined a feeder series into the W2RC would be a step in that direction, while Kevin mentioned the high costs and need for sponsorship to even have a chance.

“I would really like to go back and do it again, but I can’t just enter into T1,” Kevin explained. I need to enter in T3 or […] T2. There could be a few options in. If you’re a youngster out there and you want to go into rally raid, I think you should start doing small rallies in like Portugal and Spain and Morocco, and you can also do a Baja in the States.

“There are a few ways to enter but it’s very difficult commercially to get to Dakar because you almost need to be like Red Bull. You need to have your own helicopters, full media team to be everywhere out on the stage just to capture enough. If you’re just one person entering with one car, just a couple of mechanics, you can’t get any proper footage and value from doing it.”

Although the Hansens are longtime Red Bull athletes, their team’s current financial woes make it obvious that they’re not in the best state to try it barring an influx of support.

After four rounds, Kevin sits fifth in the World RX standings with a best finish of third in Finland. Older brother Timmy is fourth in points. Turkey will be the final race for World RX before its reorganization into European Rallycross.

Besides rallycross, the younger Hansen has also been testing the Pioneer 25 ahead of Extreme H’s debut in October.

Featured image credit: Kevin Hansen