Mr Le Mans: meeting nine-time winner Tom Kristensen

Plans to join Toyota at Le Mans were scuppered, delaying his debut at the race by four years. “It wasn’t an endurance car for 24 hours,” he says. “Everything was screaming to the extreme. I can see why they hit some issues at Le Mans.”

Do you remember the first time?

On his return to Europe, Kristensen shone in International F3000, before receiving a fateful call from Ralf Juttner at Joest Racing just a matter of days before the 1997 Le Mans 24 Hours. Joining Ferrari F1 veterans Michele Alboreto and Stefan Johansson, he put in a stunning performance to claim a debut victory. At Goodwood Speedweek last year, he was reunited with the Porsche-powered TWR WSC95 for the first time since.

“It doesn’t take long to get back into the groove: the feedback, the sound, the sensations all spring back easily,” he recalls. “It was nearly 25 years later: incredible. The car has an H-pattern gearbox, it’s right-hand drive and it has no power steering, but I had driven cars like that in Japan. It has a very short wheelbase and a wide track, so it’s very reactive, and you need to get used to that. The aerodynamics weren’t very sophisticated and the rear was always a bit aggressive when you came off the brakes. But it was a car you could lean on – a good one in which to make my Le Mans debut.”

One that got away

They say that the losses stick more than the victories, and in Kristensen’s case Le Mans in 1999 with BMW’s Williams-designed V12 LMR is one that still gnaws away at him.

“It was an important time for me,” he says. “I had won Le Mans first time out with a new lap record, then the following year, instead of signing for a team four days before the race, I had offers from four manufacturers. With BMW in 1998, we had an experienced driver line-up but not necessarily for Le Mans, and after the wheel bearing failures that cost us that year, they sacked some of them.

“Suddenly I was doing a lot of development work. We improved the car for 1999, made it much more drivable and won first time out at the Sebring 12 Hours. But we didn’t win Le Mans. We were leading by four laps when the rear suspension broke and JJ Lehto crashed [a roll bar jammed the throttle wide open]. Mentally, it was a huge knock back. All the manufacturers were there that year – it was named the Race of the Century – and we deserved to win. But we didn’t, and I respect that at Le Mans. Having that pain always came to mind when I started to feel good in the years after.”

F1 tests... his patience

As Kristensen’s reputation soared, F1 teams took note. But having risen through the ranks without paying for drives, he wasn’t about to bring money (he didn’t have) to a team. Still, he did thousands of testing miles for Michelin, which was returning to F1 in 2001. But the ‘no F1 starts’ topic is still a sensitive one: “That was proper work, there was mutual respect; some of the other tests weren’t like that. The Michelin tests were with a Williams and then a Stewart-Ford when Jaguar had bought the team. Great times. Sessions at Jerez were particularly enjoyable, and it gave me a lot of confidence and knowledge that when F1 was ready for me, I would be ready too. It never happened, and we don’t need to go into that.”

The key Le Mans car

The R8 LMP was the car in which the Kristensen legend took root. He joined Audi in 2000, then won five of the next six Le Mans, interrupted only by Bentley’s memorable victory in 2003 – and even then, it was him leading the charge in the Speed 8.

“The R8 was adaptable and, over many years, they were able to improve it,” he says. “The first one had a bit too much understeer, but from the second year it was very good; great for the mechanics, who could get to all areas and change things quickly [including the controversial modular gearbox that inspired a rule change]. You can easily talk about ‘the Audi years’, but there were three seasons when it was only privateers that ran the R8.”

Even then, Kristensen and the car kept winning, first with the Japanese Team Goh in 2004 and then with American Champion Racing in 2005. “It was a very interesting time – a bit like Group C, when Porsche privateers could enter and win,” he says.

A proud Bentley boy

Kristensen will always be proud of his status as a Bentley Boy in the wake of the marque’s 2003 Le Mans victory – its first for 73 years. He says: “It was good that I had got used to the British sense of humour during my year in the BTCC in 2000…

“The Bentley was the most elegant race car that I drove. There were five or six mechanics who joined from Joest, and they happened to be on my #7 car, so within the team there was camaraderie but also competitiveness. It was a change of environment: I had a closed cockpit now and the Achilles’ heel was the narrow Michelins, which at high speed made the car much more alive. That was a nice challenge.

“Winning was the icing on the cake, but suddenly it was over. We didn’t know that they would stop, that the rug would be pulled. It was an intensive seven months.”

Crash, bang, wallop

Kristensen mentioned the BTCC. It’s easy to forget this sophisticated, premier-class racer knocked about with the likes of Jason Plato and Matt Neal in a Honda Accord in 2000 – and ended up winning the final two races run to Super Touring rules.

He remembers: “The first race was at Brands Hatch, and I think I had contact with both Jason and Matt straight away! In race control, they got away with many things. Then straight after, they would say: ‘Hey, Tom, don’t worry about it.’ Yes, but they were lying! I laugh now…

“At the final races, we were getting up to speed and I was looking forward to another year. It was nice to win the last two, in the dark at Silverstone without high-beam headlights… It’s a very physical championship where everything is taken to the limit, in every sense.”