Tom Kristensen: The ultimate benchmark

1997: A sensational debut

At the beginning of 1997, the 29-year-old Dane, who was in danger of becoming a journeyman and had raced a little bit of everything in the last few years, missed out on a drive with the newly-formed (and soon to be ill-fated) Lola Formula One team.

By the beginning of June he was leading the F3000 championship, where he'd found refuge, and little did he know that just two weeks later he would be a Le Mans 24 Hours winner.

Kristensen narrowly missed out on a drive at Le Mans two years earlier when he was pencilled in to share a McLaren F1 GTR with JJ Lehto and Masanori Sekiya, but was replaced at the 11th hour by Yannick Dalmas. The fact that that car went on to win the 1995 race made his own unexpected, last-minute success in 1997 all the sweeter.

"It was my first year, my first time at Le Mans in anything," he said. "For me, that will always be the most special because without that none of the others would have come.

"It was bizarre. I was leading F3000 and I got a call 10 days before the race to ask if I could make it. They were looking for a guy to partner (Stefan) Johansson and (Michele) Alboreto, and they thought I was the guy they needed. On Friday I went to Joest and had a seat fitting in a tub because the car was already at Le Mans.

"I had an F3000 test at the A1 Ring on the same days as qualifying at Le Mans so I had to have a private plane to only miss a little bit of time. I only did 17 laps in qualifying so I was pretty green going into the race, but being with Michele and Stefan was great.

"To win together was very special because it was their first Le Mans victory as well. We beat the works Porsche on reliability, but we were still very strong in the race.

"Every time I got in the car I tried to get my level up and in my third time I did a lap record, and went on to do a fourth stint and win the race, so that's something I will forever be hugely thankful for."

1998-1999: The BMW years

After his one-off with Joest, Kristensen was suddenly hot property in sportscars and had several options for 1998. He'd signed to race in the German Super Touring Championship for the season but hadn't given up on his Formula One dream yet, and it was that goal that influenced his decision to join BMW.

"I had options with all the manufacturers, there were a lot coming to Le Mans and I was talking to more or less all of them - it was a dream," he said. "I was still thinking it was my last chance to break into F1 so that's mainly why I chose with BMW, because of the links with Williams.

"But the car was too low on downforce and I had a few issues about it taking off - there were some very interesting moments in testing! In the race in '98 we had to retire the car because of wheel bearings, which was very tough because we were running between third and fifth between pit stops and we were looking good. We were very fast on the straights and we learned a lot that year to use for '99.

"In 1999 the LMR car was really mega, with the single roll hoop and the V12 engine. Some new drivers came in and I drove with JJ (Lehto) and Jorg Muller and we won Sebring together so we went into Le Mans on a high.

"We were battling with Toyota - they were a little bit faster than us, but we could go longer so they were always having to come through us and it was a classic fight until (Thierry) Boutsen had a horrible accident during the night (in the No.2 Toyota GT-One).

"We had a huge lead when the suspension broke. The damper unscrewed itself and JJ went off at the Porsche Curves. If it had happened at any other place on the track we could have got back to the pits, fixed the car, and still won. But the sister car won and I still felt part of that victory. It was a year that got away, but I've learned to accept that Le Mans gives you good and bad."

2000: Joining Audi

A new era dawned in sportscars with the turn of the millennium. BMW and Toyota departed for Formula One and Mercedes called time on their program to concentrate on the DTM.

A chance invitation to drop by Audi's headquarters later in 1999 led to Kristensen joining the factory squad for what would become an incredible run of success. He would win the next three editions of the race with the same team-mates, in the same car, for the same team.

"My decision to stop off at Ingelstadt on the way home from another race to speak to Dr Wolfgang Ulrich turned out to be a very wise one," he said.

"He showed me a drawing of the R8 - for him to do that when I was still with a rival manufacturer was brave - and the car impressed so much that I said I would like to be a part of this, and ever since I have been a part of Audi.

"But it was never easy and it was a tough race in 2000. Audi have accomplished so much when you look back now, but at the time it was the very first year. They had taken a lot from the '99 car, it had good speed, but there were many things to overcome.

"To win it like we did, with a one-two-three for the team, was really great, especially after the disappointment of '99. I had a good partnership with (Frank) Biela and (Emanuele) Pirro, and that we were able to do it three years in a row tells you that we had something very special."

2001: The hardest of all

The Audi squad lost elder statesman when Michele Alboreto was killed testing the R8 at Lausitz earlier in the year. If the challenge of going on despite the loss of the charismatic Italian wasn't enough, the race threw up more than its fair share of hurdles.

"It was a very difficult year for all of us," he said. "We lost our friend Michele, which was a really terrible blow for everyone. We all looked up to him. He was an icon not just in terms of his achievements and his career, but also his behaviour and being such a gentleman.

"It's always an issue for drivers that it's difficult to be tough and hard on the track, but also be respected and popular, and you can say that about Michele - everyone would. Losing him was incredibly tough on us.

"Then the race was a wet one and it was very, very difficult, not just physically but mentally too. We couldn't use slicks for 19 out of the 24 hours and it was just a nightmare, I felt like that race was running for a week. I had to really, really mentally prepare myself to go out for each stint.

"I changed onto intermediates too early during the night and so I had the hardest fight for 20 minutes. We didn't have time to come back in for slicks, I just had to wait for them to come in. I remember it was 20 minutes of incredible mental pain and strain to be risking so much.

"I remember having to really dare to brake five metres later because I just didn't know if I had the grip. There was a very narrow dry line on the straights, but it was damp in the braking zones and corners. When they finally started to grip we reeled them all in, the others had to change and we won. But what I remember most about it that period when it was so mentally hard just to stay on the track.

"Also during that race we had an issue with third gear, every time you changed there was a clunk. It was built to shift flat but, because of the weather, in third gear we were still spinning the wheels so you couldn't stay flat. But it wasn't built to not be flat and for some reason it was causing damage.

"The engineer said 'OK, it's a build issue that we have to change, but for now you just have to go flat out.' So at about 9am I was in the car and I was very fast at the time.

"People said I was being stupid because I was fish-tailing the car around and some laps we were 10 seconds faster than the opposition, even though we were nearly two laps ahead. But they didn't know the situation, I was happy that I was just staying on track.

"After lunch I was on track again, going as fast as I could and not being very cautious. Out of Arnage it wouldn't go into fourth or fifth. I got back to the pits, drove it straight into the garage and jumped out of the car. Everyone got to work and I recognised the chief mechanic from the other car, which was now trying to catch us.

"I saw him working on the car and my eyes followed him thinking 'what's going on here?' Then, in no time, the rear end was back on, Biela was back out and we still had the lead. I asked the mechanic why he was helping us when he was also trying to beat us, and he said: 'you deserve this, we are one team and it should be a race.'

"I was amazed and then so ashamed that I had a brief mistrust. But this is what we have at Audi, everyone is willing to do the utmost for anyone. He was proud of helping us and the 2001 victory was down to the mechanics because if they'd been only one and a half minutes longer, we'd have dropped to second at least.

2002: The hat-trick

Kristensen completed and incredible hat-trick of victories alongside Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro but, once again, it wasn't all plain sailing.

"What I remember most about 2002 is the heat. It was also the year of the World Cup and when Denmark beat France everyone said 'for sure you will get stop-go penalties now!' And what happened? In the early evening I was fighting with Johnny Herbert (who was in the sister R8), having a good battle, and suddenly I get a stop-go.

"I was so furious, you know that swearing down the radio doesn't help but you still do it when you're angry like that.

"At around midnight I was leading and I came into the Porsche Curves, braking down to fifth, when there was a big noise and the car didn't turn in and I only missed the barrier by a tiny bit. I saw that there was carbon everywhere at the front right and knew the tyre had exploded.

"I was coming back to the pits at maybe 150kph (90mph), all the cars are flying past making it feel so slow, but it was quite fast for three wheels! I came in, stopped, and just tried to stay relaxed as the mechanics start work because you don't know how long it will be, especially when the bodywork is broken.

"So I'm just waiting and then they say 'be ready', I couldn't believe it. Then the car goes down and I was back out. It was less than three minutes in total. I didn't believe they could have fixed it so quickly so on the straight I just braked a little to feel it, but it really was OK so I got on with it.

"It wasn't until the morning that I was standing in the pits and I saw the car from that side. It was missing more than a metre behind the front wheel. I said 'how could you let us drive like that!' and he just said 'it was missing much less than that at midnight', which was a good answer!"

2003: Becoming a Bentley boy

With the its own factory effort withdrawn for 2003, Audi provided an engine and its Joest works team to assist Bentley with its Le Mans return.

That assistance included the use of some of Audi's factory drivers, so Kristensen shared with Rinaldo Capello for the first time in a Bentley. Alongside Guy Smith, they gave the British marque its first success in the great race since 1930, beating the best of the customer R8s.

"The Bentley was the most beautiful car I've ever driven at Le Mans," he said. "It was a big difference to be sitting inside with a roof over me again, and the tyres were narrower, but it was very enjoyable to drive. And, being a British set-up, we drank a lot more tea than with Audi!

"I remember the very first time me and Dindo came to Britain in the January, to the factory. We had a tour of the assembly plant and thought it was on holiday. It didn't look like it was moving, but we watched very close and it was. That was a bit different to Audi, but everything was done very carefully by hand.

"I think we offended them on the first day, though. They were showing us the steering wheels they were building, saying 'this is for David Beckham's car and this is for Cliff Richard's, and Dindo says 'who is Cliff Richard?' The guy nearly fell off his chair. I guess we weren't very British!

"They were all very passionate about Bentley and they were always talking about the importance of the brand and the luxury, 'like the Italians in racing' they said, and Dindo asks: 'so, like with FIAT?' Which didn't go down well either.

"We had a really perfect race that year. It's never as easy as it looks, but apart from a small change on the grid, it was just an absolutely perfect race from start to finish.

"It was really special for me to have worked with a brand like Bentley and I'm very proud to say that I was a Bentley boy. And also that I survived the victory party at the Savoy hotel!"

2004-2005: Privateer wins and completing six in a row

Customer cars reigned for the next few years and Kristensen completed his amazing run of six consecutive victories. It was the start of Audi's battle with Pescarolo and, like this year, the German marque wasn't always the favourite on sheer speed.

The first year, Kristensen was with the Japanese Team Goh, alongside Dindo Capello and Seiji Ara, and the second he raced for the American Champion Racing outfit, with JJ Lehto and Marco Werner.

"We had only private teams now and it was the first time I'd been a one car team since I joined Joest," he said. "It was a really nice atmosphere to have everything in one garage and everyone concentrating on the same thing, although it was difficult to compare against anything with just one car.

"We had problems in pre-qualifying with a broken gearbox and we were struggling a bit. In the race week we got to a very good set-up, but we had a big blow early in the race when we had an issue with the brakes and Dindo had to stop in the gravel and we lost a lap.

"That was the year that Allan (McNish) and JJ (Lehto) crashed when they hit the oil in the Porsche Curves. Dindo would have been around them on the track if we hadn't had our problems. He's always said that because he was further down, he didn't pass the oil as early as they did and that's what saved us, while it really ruined their race.

"We had to come from the back during that race and it was really great to do it with such a small team. I'd spent a lot of time driving in Japan in my career before that and a lot of things came together that year. It was another special one because it was a small team, it was with the Japanese, and it was still with Audi. On speed, we had been the outsiders but we were very strong over the whole week.

"For 2005 I was with Champion Racing. This was one of the races from the era of the R8 that was really cool. Allan (McNish) will say the same even though he came a few seconds after me. We had a really nice fight, the strategy, the decisions whether to take new tyres or keep old tyres, short fuelling, it had everything.

"The problem we had was that the Pescarolo cars were around four seconds a lap faster than us because we had to carry 50kg of weight and use a smaller restrictor. There was no way we could win it on speed alone, which is maybe a little bit similar for this year. It was a really tough race.

"What I remember the most is at 12:25pm, (Marco) Werner was in the car, in the lead, but we had a slow puncture. He had to come into the pits so they put me in the car and we were really under pressure. They said to me 'you have to stay in the car until the end of the race, and you have to do lap times less than 3m42s. Anything more than that and the Pescarolo will catch us before the end.'

"It was a long, hard stint, but 45 minutes before the end of the race I had been on the good side of 3m42s, so it looked good. It was unbelievably hot and the circuit was starting to break up. Then the Pescarolo pulled in with overheating problems, so we could afford to stop as well and put new tyres on, and we won."

2006-2007: Defeat, an unfamiliar feeling

Audi returned to Le Mans as a works team and brought with it a new car, the diesel-powered R10 TDi. The car was an immediate success and won comfortably in the end from the Pescarolos in 2006 and the Peugeots, making their debut in 2007.

But for the first time since the 90s, Kristensen was not part of the winning crew. Instead, Frank Biela, Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner added a couple to their individual tallies.

"This was my first year sharing with both Dindo (Capello) and Allan (McNish) and it was also the first year for the R10. We had won at Sebring earlier in the season, which was the first win for the diesel, and we wanted it to behave well so we could do the same at Le Mans," he said.

"We were leading early on after starting from pole position. But, still quite early in the race, we had a few issues with the high pressure injection of the diesel. We lost a lot of time with the problem, but we crawled back and still finished third, while the other car won."

Last year, Kristensen had to overcome his massive DTM smash at Hockenheim, which sidelined him for most of the season before Le Mans.

"I came back after the accident and it was maybe a little bit too early, but it was good for me because it helped me to be back. Otherwise I would probably still be hanging around at home now not knowing what I could or couldn't do.

"I spoke a bit to Allan who has had a few impacts a bit like this himself. The DTM car had a 63g impact so I knew I had been through a little bit, but Allan said 'when you are in the car you might get some problems, but it will get better. After the second time in the car you will know whether it's right or not, but you won't know before then.'

"There was quite a lot of media interest on the Wednesday afternoon, but I got in the car and just did an out lap and then in again. Allan was right. I knew it was OK but I knew I had to stay a bit out of the spotlight. He and Dindo are both very good at talking to the media, so I let them do that and I was just resting a lot.

"We really were having a dream race. Everything went absolutely perfectly and nobody put a foot wrong until unfortunately we lost a wheel, with close to four laps lead. It was similar to in 1999, we were still leading for nearly quarter of an hour after we went out. After you retire you just want to freeze time.

"At Le Mans you have a race that can be hard to you, but it can also be good to you. From my side, I've enjoyed racing at Le Mans. I've been fortunate enough to be with fantastic teams, cars and drivers every year.

"Every year except '98 I've managed to be part of a car that ran in the lead. In '98 I think we ran third at one stage, but every other year we have been in the lead, and sometimes we have won it. I have had a little bit of everything over the years."

2008: The coming challenge

Looking ahead to what will be his 12th Le Mans, Kristensen, now 40, says the motivation is just as strong as it was back in 1997. And he's eager to keep adding victories to his record tally of seven.

"There are different things that drive you over the years. Now, what I really want is to win it with Dindo and Allan. We don't need to say it to the whole world, but we know that we have the speed to win.

"We have a real hunger and determination because we haven't achieved it yet together, but we know it will be so good when we, hopefully, at some stage, win it together.

"The most important thing is that you are happy together on the way to the goal. If you're not enjoying yourself on the way to the goal, you won't enjoy it when you get there.

"But we definitely know we'll enjoy ourselves when we get there. We are different characters but we blend well together. We have the greatest respect for each other, we know how we can improve together and there are no secrets.

"I come here now knowing that I've already won seven times, so I don't have that desperation to prove myself. I can just enjoy the racing, almost like the old times.

"You can think about behaving a little bit like Michele Alboreto, Derek Bell or Jacky Ickx. They all had the hunger, the will, and the determination to do it, but you would also like to do it in a nice way. This is the feeling I have when we come here now."

Kristensen also looked to the future and says that after his DTM career has finished, he would like to be able to race sportscars full time at some stage, rather than just coming in for Sebring and Le Mans.

"At the moment, I have the issue that Audi is very focussed on DTM as well, and they really like you to be versatile. I like this word, and I like the idea to be trying to do well in different cars and this is part of the motivation for my career being so long now.

"But sportscars are what I like the most. If you ask me for the future, I would like to be back in full-time sportscars at one stage, after DTM. It's a little bit different now that I come in and join Dindo and Allan, who have a perfect partnership, they drive together all the time.

"After my earlier successes I think I am a bit more relaxed about racing at Le Mans now, and some people say that after my accident I am also a bit more relaxed. In the car I feel the same, and I'm trying to get back to the same level. Maybe I'm not exactly there yet in terms of consistency, like I was before the accident, but I know it's not far off now. Last year was tough during the whole year, but now, this year, I'm better.

"I don't know what will happen in the future, or how long I will drive for, but I'll race as long as I like what I'm doing and I'm motivated for it.

"Audi has been very good to me over the years, it was a very wise decision to go with them. They were also very kind to me after my accident last year, they sidelined me and just said 'call when you want to come back.' I called earlier than expected and I've benefitted from that.

"I want to do a good job for Audi, and this is an interesting year because we are not the favourites on speed. But this is exactly the challenge we have had before and we will have now with our three-year-old R10.

"We want to show our consistency and that we will fight to the very end. If someone is still ahead of us at the end of 24 hours, they will have done a very good job."

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