Malthe Jakobsen was not even a year old when Tom Kristensen secured his record-equalling sixth victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2004. The Danish endurance legend pulled clear of Jacky Ickx’s tally over the coming years and by 2013 had amassed a remarkable nine in the world’s most famous endurance race, cementing his legacy as ‘Mr Le Mans’ and going a long way to raising the event’s profile at home.
Danish interest in Le Mans hasn’t waned in the years since Kristensen’s retirement and has arguably gone from strength to strength. It had 13 drivers on the entry list this year, including three in the Hypercar class: Nicklas Nielsen (Ferrari), Mikkel Jensen (Peugeot) and Michael Christensen (Porsche) all gunning for outright success. But only one of the Nordic kingdom’s citizens ended up on a podium. That individual was Thisted-born 19-year-old Jakobsen, a Le Mans rookie.
Sure, it wasn’t quite the debut victory that Kristensen managed in 1997, and Jakobsen’s runner-up finish in the LMP2 Pro-Am class wasn’t without problems. An off in the early hours of Sunday morning required a 29-minute spell in the garage to fix the Cool Racing ORECA-Gibson 07 he shared with Nicolas Lapierre and Alexandre Coigny. But it was an invaluable experience in the irrepressible rise of a driver who, despite his tender age, is already into his sixth year of car racing.
Jakobsen stepped out of karting and made the switch to cars, in his national Formula 4 championship, “when we saw the first opportunity” in 2018 at the age of 14. After winning the crown the following season, he moved into sportscars for 2020 in the LMP3 division of the European Le Mans Series with RLR MSport. Third on his debut in the Paul Ricard opener was a promising sign of what was to come.
“Today, I’m super happy that we started in the single-seaters so early because it gave me such a lot of experience in a super-young age,” he tells Autosport in the Cool Racing hospitality. “I’m sure that kind of built the basis to get to where I am today.”
Jakobsen expanded his programme in 2021 to include the Asian Le Mans Series and a maiden foray into the IMSA SportsCar Championship in addition to the ELMS, before combining ELMS, its supporting Le Mans Cup and five IMSA rounds in 2022. With the exception of his 2021 ELMS season, when he had experienced Briton Alex Kapadia alongside gentleman driver Michael Benham, Jakobsen habitually took the lead on set-up and that expertise paid off last year. Switching to Swiss squad Cool Racing, co-owned by Lapierre, he clinched the ELMS P3 title together with Benham and fellow bronze Maurice Smith.
“I think it was healthy that I started in P3s,” he explains. “The strongest line-up is to have silver and bronze only, so it meant [in 2022] I was the most experienced and leading driver that the two gentleman drivers were working up to. They were always relying on me to set up the car and coach them.
Source: Autosport