Champion returns with new team

Former champion Ronny Scheveneels will make a full-time return to the FIA European Rallycross Championship this year driving a Peugeot 207 Supercar entered by RSB Racing and engineered by Pailler Competition.

Scheveneels won his European title in 2001 driving a VW Golf GTi in what was then the Group N-based Division Two category of the championship. The successful step up to international competition came on the back of a string of national titles, Scheveneels having won Belgian championship crowns in 1995, ’96, ’99 and 2000. Finding that same level of success in the Supercar category has, however, proven much more difficult.

Now the Belgian (46) is making a fresh start in his bid to achieve further international success. “I drove a Pailler Competition Peugeot in Holland last summer and it was different from any other Supercar I’d ever had,” said Scheveneels, “There’s a different level of engineering and experience in a team that has been successful in the European championship and I was immediately competitive.”

That event and a couple of further outings with Pailler Competition has led to the formation of a new team operated by Belgian Sven Boeckx with Scheveneels as the driver.

“That event in Holland showed us all what is possible and from that I have formed RSB Racing which will take part in the European championship with Ronny Scheveneels as the driver,” said Boeckx who has created the new team as a division of SB Consult, his successful logistics company. “In the last few years Ronny has had fantastic mechanics in his team who we will continue to work with, but it has perhaps been short of the kind of engineering knowledge that is needed to compete at the highest level, in making an agreement with Pailler Competition to supply the car and engineers for RSB Racing I am confident that we will arrive in the European Rallycross Championship with a competitive package. This is a new start that has come from that fantastic result in Holland last year. After that event people kept saying ‘Ronny’s back!’ With the European Rallycross Championship being promoted by IMG in 2013 I could see new opportunities and RSB Racing has been formed to make the most of them.”

RSB Racing was named by combining the initials, RS (Ronny Scheveneels) and SB (Sven Boeckx, also referring to SB Consult). The new team will use a Peugeot 207 from Pailler Competition, the car builder and race team run by 1993 European champion Jean-Luc Pailler from Brittany. Separately from his European season with RSB Racing, Scheveneels plans to drive in Belgian championship events with his VW Scirocco.

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