diff --git a/tests/vm/basevm.py b/tests/vm/basevm.py
index 8aef4cff96700f017cfd11d67ca131a7a9903e1a..61725b83254733a48ff9cbe2eeb8e1ed83572d0b 100644
--- a/tests/vm/basevm.py
+++ b/tests/vm/basevm.py
@@ -331,8 +331,8 @@ def console_init(self, timeout = None):
     def console_log(self, text):
         for line in re.split("[\r\n]", text):
             # filter out terminal escape sequences
-            line = re.sub("\x1b\[[0-9;?]*[a-zA-Z]", "", line)
-            line = re.sub("\x1b\([0-9;?]*[a-zA-Z]", "", line)
+            line = re.sub("\x1b\\[[0-9;?]*[a-zA-Z]", "", line)
+            line = re.sub("\x1b\\([0-9;?]*[a-zA-Z]", "", line)
             # replace unprintable chars
             line = re.sub("\x1b", "<esc>", line)
             line = re.sub("[\x00-\x1f]", ".", line)
@@ -530,7 +530,7 @@ def get_qemu_version(qemu_path):
        and return the major number."""
     output = subprocess.check_output([qemu_path, '--version'])
     version_line = output.decode("utf-8")
-    version_num = re.split(' |\(', version_line)[3].split('.')[0]
+    version_num = re.split(r' |\(', version_line)[3].split('.')[0]
     return int(version_num)
 
 def parse_config(config, args):