One driver stands tall far above the rest though: Tom Kristensen. With an astounding nine wins, the Dane is three wins clear of the next most-successful Le Mans legend Jacky Ickx. With six consecutive La Sarthe victories between 2000 and 2005, at one point it seemed as if he couldn’t stop winning.
As we approach this year’s 100th running of Le Mans – one of the most anticipated in years, featuring a bumper Hypercar class of 16 cars – there’s no-one better to share the secret of winning there than Kristensen himself.
Kristensen took debut Le Mans win with Porsche in ’97
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Whilst also performing testing duties for the MinardiF1 team and competing in Japanese Formula 3000, Kristensen would take part in what turned out to be a sensational debut appearance at La Sarthe for Porsche in its only win at the blue-riband race.
Meet and speak to Le Mans legend Tom Kristensen at a special event and dinner
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Motor Sport
After Davy Jones injured himself prior, the young Dane was parachuted in just over a week before the 1997 race.
“Everything happened very fast,” he told Motor Sport in 2010. “I flew to Germany next day. The car and most of the mechanics had already left for Le Mans, but sitting on the workshop floor was a spare monocoque, and Jürgen Hördt suggested I get in and try it. I wriggled into the seat and I said, ‘It’s fine, it fits me very well.’ Then, starting to feel at home, I said, ‘Maybe if the brake could be just a fraction closer, it would be perfect.’ And old Jürgen put his head down to me in the cockpit and said, ‘Das schnellste bestimmt bei uns’ – with us, the fastest driver decides that. That put me in my place.”
Kristensen had never even laid eyes on the circuit before his first practice laps, but soon made himself at home.
After the car qualified on pole, an incredible quadruple stint in the evening of the race from a man who came to be known as ‘The Great Dane’ cemented the win for Joest-Porsche.
“It was a breakthrough for me,” he said in 2021. “The win in ’97 for a Danish driver generated more interest even though football and handball were still by far the biggest sports at home.”
After two DNFs in the years following his debut Le Mans win, Kristensen added a second in 2000, now driving for Audi.
Kristensen, Emanuele Pirro and Frank Biela filed the second-fastest time behind the No8 Joest R8 in qualifying, before going on to clinch the win come race day – some consolation for surrendering victory the previous year with BMW after suspension issues destroyed a gargantuan lead.
The Dane was now a double La Sarthe winner – the start of an incredible victory run.
“It was the best thing I’ve ever done in my mature life as a racing driver,” he told Motor Sport about joining Audi. “That also shows you have to go with your gut feelings [choosing Audi]. Gut feelings is what makes these things.”
Different race, same story on track – but poignant off it: Kristensen, Pirro and Biela qualified second, but finished first in the rock-solid R8 – 1 lap ahead of the next Audi car and 16 laps ahead of the third-placed Bentley machine.
However, what marks out this win for Kristensen was the circumstances in which it was taken.
“The 2001 Le Mans victory is particularly unforgettable for me, because on April 25 that year we lost Michele,” he said.Michele Alboreto, a hugely well-liked name in the motor sport world was killed when testing the Audi R8 at the Lausitzring.
“We respected Michele greatly, he won his final race at Sebring, and we felt him missing at Le Mans, we all thought about him. After his crash there had been a lot of talk about the danger of this type of racing.”
The inherent hazards were very much on the mind of Kristensen during the ’01 edition, when inclement weather closed in.
“Le Mans 2001 was wet,” he remembered. “Endlessly wet. Heavy rain at Le Mans means you are constantly aquaplaning, because water lies in the indentations in the track. That year the 24 hours felt like a week. There were a lot of accidents, and driving slowly during all the safety car periods the cockpit filled up with water, up to your arms, like sitting in a bath.
“Because of the conditions, and all the safety car periods, we weren’t changing gear at full throttle, and that upset the transmission. In the end I lost fourth gear, so I chugged into the pits in fifth and, with less than four hours to go, they changed the gearbox. We still won by a lap. On the podium I felt completely empty, physically and mentally. Dr Ullrich [former head of Audi Motorsport] said, ‘This one is for Michele’, and we all burst into tears. It was the most emotional Le Mans for me.”
Kristensen makes it a hat-trick of consecutive La Sarthe wins
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One year on from his previous win, 2002 was scarcely less eventful. Yet again Kristensen’s car was runner-up in qualifying, but race day was what mattered to ‘Mr Le Mans’.
As he described to Motor Sport, significant challenges and then some were thrown his way.
“In 2002, close to midnight, I had a right front puncture going into the Porsche Curves,” he remembered.
“A huge explosion, took out a lot of the front bodywork. I managed to get to the pits on three wheels, but I thought our race was gone – or, at least, we’d be in the pits a very long time. The mechanics were working on the right front, I was just sitting in the cockpit trying to be calm, and after about two minutes the chief engineer said, ‘Tom, be ready.’ The guy working on the right front caught my eye and put his thumb up. Then the engine was fired up and out I went.
“I’d been stationary about three minutes. I couldn’t believe it. We won the race, and the next morning when I looked at the car I realised there was a metre and a half of bodywork missing, back to the radiator.”
It was a third consecutive win for the former trio, the first time in Le Mans history for a team line-up to do so.
2003 – “The most beautiful-looking Le Mans car ever”
Kristensen made history with Bentley victory
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The main challenge for Kristensen in 2003 didn’t come from his competitors or even outside forces on track – rather the winning design he was driving.
Kristensen, Guy Smith and Capello were one of the crews tasked with emulating the ‘Bentley Boys’ of yesteryear, and this time overcame rising temperatures at 200mph in the cockpit of the Bentley Speed 8.
“The Bentley was a closed car: better aerodynamics, but very little space inside, and very hot,” he said.
“In our open Audis there is heat from the side radiators, and the monocoque gets warm, but you’re breathing mainly clean air. In a closed car the air you breathe is really hot – they didn’t use air-con in race cars then. Running behind the safety car was almost unbearable, because at low speeds there was no airflow through the car. But for me the Bentley is still the most beautiful-looking Le Mans car ever.”
As the car-design cliche goes, if it looks fast, it usually is, and win No5 came calling for Kristensen and co – the Dane had now surpassed legends such as Olivier Gendebien, Henri Pescarolo and Yannick Dalmas in the record books.
2004 – “It’s very nice to know the focus is on you”
2004 was a single-car effort with Team Goh
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Back at Audi, this time driving for Japanese squad Team Goh with Capello and Seiji Ara, the trusty R8 was qualified in a solid fourth position. Different to most of his Le Mans entries, Kristensen says he appreciated the feeling of being part of a solo La Sarthe effort.
“There is something very, very nice for the drivers to know that in that pit, in that garage all the concentration, all the hard work and focus goes into one car.
“Of course, this also makes the team owners and manager very vulnerable with only one car.”
In some senses similar to the ACO’s hopes for WEC in the new Hypercar era, the early 2000s was a golden age of privateers at Le Mans, and Kristensen relished it.
“There were quite a lot of private teams doing the R8s at the same time,” he notes. “But Pescarolo were probably the biggest favourite for winning in 2004.”
At one point the Team Veloqx car driven by Guy Smith, Johnny Herbert and Jamie Davis led by over a lap from the Kristensen car after it had suffered an electrical issue, but a suspension problem promoted the Dane’s car to first, and he never looked back.
Astonishing sixth consecutive victory with Champion
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2005 was again battle of the privateers, and Kristensen had transferred to the No3 Champion Racing effort.
Starting in seventh, Marco Werner claimed the lead for the team in the second hour, in a battle Kristensen relished.
“Beforehand [the Pescarolo cars] were easily going to win because we had 50 kilos extra as success ballast weight with a narrow rear wing – so on speed we couldn’t win,” he said. “But efficiency, strategy and taking risk and paid off – it happened to be that our car won that race.
“That was with the last victory with the R8, which won five times. I was very privileged to be part of that team. The car was at that time [2005] was very well tested due to the three years with Team Joest years and the works teams 2001 and 2002.”
With this seventh win Kristensen overtook Le Mans legend Jacky Ickx’s record of six victories – he was now most successful driver at the blue riband enduro.
Huge team effort overcame the ‘Pug’ challenge in ’08
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“There was no way we were going to win [in 2008] and the press was all over us,” Kristensen said of Audi’s challenge in the form of the works Peugeot effort three years later.
“We were 3.7 seconds slower [per lap] than the Peugeots [in the dry], but with the rain [forecast] we were not accepting to give up.
“There was rain and through the night we passed the Peugeots, and Capello, McNish, and myself won. I had never felt before that everyone in the team was so proud and so happy.
“Some of the victories have been fantastic, but there it was [for] everyone, and to be in that state was absolutely fantastic.”
None matched the R18, according to the ‘Great Dane’
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“I would say the greatest car I ever drove is probably our 2013 R18,” Kristensen attested to Motor Sport. “For me it is the car which means the most to me.”
Kristensen’s Le Mans swansong would be his crowning glory, a record-extending ninth win, all completed in the devastatingly competent prototype.
The No2 car of Kristensen, McNish and Loïc Duval took pole and, despite a collision during the evening, led the final 248 laps to claim the marque’s 12th victory in the race since its return in 2000.
It was after this final win that Kristensen said he struggled to find the motivation to go on – the Dane would compete in one more Le Mans in 2014, finishing second.
“My dad died in 2013 and so he was not there to ask me why wasn’t I faster, why hadn’t I won this race or the other, and why did I overtake where I did, things like that,” he said. “I missed his input, that intimacy with him. These kind of conversations you can’t always have with the team.
“Then in 2014 we had the new regulations, and that was a challenge I enjoyed, the lift and coast and all of that, but it required a very different style of driving. So, you know, I was now the oldest in the team, I was ‘Uncle Tom’ and all in all I thought it was time to stop.”
