Why Mikkel Jensen wants ‘to win Le Mans so bad’

"I’m tired of racing against you – I’ve got to have you on my team.” Those were United Autosports boss Richard Dean’s words to Mikkel Jensen when he sounded him out nearly a year ago about joining forces for the team’s graduation to the Hypercar ranks of the World Endurance Championship with McLaren in 2027.

The United/Jensen rivalry goes all the way back to 2017 – it straddles multiple categories and continents – and reveals a lot about the unconventional career that took the Dane from his first steps in karting at the late age of 15 to hot property in the Hypercar driver market. 

Jensen has driven just about every kind of sportscar since his single-seater career ground to a halt through lack of finance. On the road to Hypercar, he raced LMP3 and LMP2 prototypes together with GT3 and GTE machinery. He didn’t have a choice; he had to take whatever he was given courtesy of that lack of funds. It made him the driver he is today, he reckons.

“I had to hustle a drive anywhere I could,” says Jensen. “I drove just about everything.” The list included BMW’s DTM and GT4 machinery, as well as M1 Procar and M3 GTR racers from its historic fleet, during a three-year stint with the Munich marque. 

“Jumping in different cars helped build me as a driver. I had to adapt super-quickly to whatever I was given. I had to take whatever there was and that sometimes meant getting in a car for the first time in practice. It has given me a very open mind. I don’t have that tunnel vision that maybe some drivers have when they’ve been in one category for a long time.”

The catalyst for Jensen’s sportscar journey was the withdrawal of the backing that had taken him through his short career in single-seaters, climaxing with two seasons in the Formula 3 European Championship in 2015-16 with Mucke Motorsport. His eyes, however, were already on sportscar racing. 

Euro F3 move in 2015 meant Jensen had to turn down BMW opportunity

Photo by: Hoch Zwei / Corbis via Getty Images

“F2 was the dream, but as I felt the energy of my investor decreasing a bit, my eyes turned to endurance in my final year of F3,” he explains. Sportscars were an inevitable bleep on the radar for Jensen given his nationality: “The Le Mans 24 Hours and sportscars are almost as big as Formula 1 in Denmark thanks to Tom [Kristensen] and people like John Nielsen before him. I did different things through that year preparing for my next adventure.”

They included a one-off in the European Le Mans Series driving a GTE class Ferrari 458 Italia GT2 for the AF Corse-run Formula Racing squad, a test with the Proton Competition Porsche WEC team and participation in the Porsche junior shootout.

Another angle Jensen worked involved BMW. He’d been invited to take part in its junior trials when he won the ADAC Formel Masters title with the Neuhauser team in his second year of racing in 2014, but had to turn down the chance because he was F3-bound. 

“I took a two-year-old email from Jens Marquardt [then boss of BMW Motorsport] and forwarded it back to him, saying, ‘Do you remember this email, can I have that chance now?’” Mikkel Jensen

“I took a two-year-old email from Jens Marquardt [then boss of BMW Motorsport] and forwarded it back to him, saying, ‘Do you remember this email, can I have that chance now?’” explains Jensen.

A tryout at the Miramas test track in the south of France resulted in Jensen becoming a BMW junior driver for 2017 and a drive in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup aboard a Walkenhorst-run M6 GT3. He dovetailed that with his first steps in prototypes in P3 in the ELMS – and the beginnings of the rivalry with United. 

Jensen contested non-clashing races with father-and-son Alexander Talkanitsa Sr and Jr in a car run under the AT Racing banner by AF. “I knew Amato Ferrari [AF team boss] a bit, and he knew I was looking for a drive and didn’t have a budget,” he recalls. “The Talkanitsas wanted someone who would drive for free. It was my only opportunity.”

Jensen’s ELMS LMP3 title success in 2019 led to offer of an LMP2 seat the following year

Photo by: Eric Alonso / MB Media / Getty Images

Two years with the Talkanitsas segued into a drive with EuroInternational for 2019, the year that Jensen was promoted from BMW’s junior ranks to become a full factory driver. It was an important year – for two very different reasons. 

First up, he claimed the ELMS P3 title together with Jens Petersen at the wheel of a Ligier-Nissan JSP3 – United’s best crew was fourth in the points. Secondly, he lost his gig at BMW.

“That season was my first as a professional, aged 25, but at the end of it BMW cut down on the number of factory drivers,” he says. “So I had no BMW drive, actually no drive at all. But I decided to go all in on the prototype route.”

His ELMS form in P3 led to a call from G-Drive Racing, then running with the French TDS operation, to join its LMP2 roster as the silver-rated driver in the line-up. Jensen and Roman Rusinov ended up third in the 2020 ELMS aboard an ORECA-Gibson 07, this time giving best to United, which took the top two positions.

Just how hard Jensen had to work the angles in the formative stages of his career is illustrated by the way he landed a seat in the IMSA SportsCar Championship ahead of 2021. Recruited to drive for the Tower Motorsport P2 squad at Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta in 2020, he introduced himself to amateur racer and future two-time WEC GTE Am champion Ben Keating, then racing a Mercedes in GT Daytona, in an unusual way.

“I went up to him and said something like, ‘Hello fastest bronze in the world, I would like to drive with you’, and he came back with, ‘Hello fastest silver in the world’. Those were our first words together,” recalls Jensen.

2022 Sebring LMP2 class win with Keating (right)

Photo by: Brian Cleary / Getty Images

“Then he told me he was looking to do P2 the following year and that he knew I would be gold [an inevitable result of his performances and results in 2020], but he’d still like me to drive with him.” The result was an IMSA LMP2 title-winning season for Keating and Jensen in a PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA. 

By then Jensen was already signed up with Peugeot for its forthcoming WEC entry with the 9X8 Le Mans Hypercar. What he achieved as a silver, in both LMP3 and P2, caught the eye of the French manufacturer. In the former category, he encountered Olivier Jansonnie, who had led development of Ligier’s second-generation P3 that came on stream in 2020. The Frenchman went on to become technical director of Peugeot, overseeing its WEC entry.

Jensen was the surprise name on the announcement of the Peugeot roster in February 2021, three months after he had inked his deal. The line-up included a sprinkling of ex-F1 drivers and a Le Mans winner.

“It seemed insane that I would be driving alongside people like Paul di Resta, Jean-Eric Vergne and Loic Duval. But once you start working together you realise that we’re all human beings” Mikkel Jensen

He admits that he was daunted at first. “It seemed insane that I would be driving alongside people like Paul di Resta, Jean-Eric Vergne and Loic Duval,” he says. “But once you start working together you realise that we’re all human beings.”

Jensen never looked out of his depth in such exalted company. Rather, he emerged as the ace in the pack after the original version of the 9X8 entered competition in the summer of 2022. He was part of the line-up that scored Peugeot’s first podium at Monza in 2023, and by the end of 2024 his star was in the ascendant.

His charges to fourth place at Fuji and third in Bahrain with the revised 9X8 resulted in him being chosen to finish at all the regular races last season. “It obviously helped the way I was viewed from the outside that the team was clearly putting more trust in me,” he affirms. 

Jensen’s standout drives with Peugeot include Fuji 2024

Photo by: James Moy Photography via Getty Images

Come the end of his Peugeot contract, it was “time for a new challenge”, he says. “I was obviously not super-happy with the performances. I am at a golden point in my career. I’ve just turned 31, a good age for an endurance driver. I wasn’t really getting the success I felt like I deserved – I haven’t won a WEC race yet.”

There were other options for Jensen, but he chose the McLaren LMDh project for a number of reasons. The first was the heritage and record of the organisation in F1 and beyond; he name-checks the F1 GTR that won Le Mans on its debut back in 1995.

There was also a desire to be in on the ground floor of development of a car due to hit the track in May, even if meant a year away from the Hypercar grid. (This year he is racing for United in P2 in IMSA and the Asian Le Mans Series to get to know a team that will compete in Hypercar as McLaren United AS.)

“It is an advantage to be involved in the project from the beginning, to put your touch on everything and get to know people as they are introduced to the programme, instead of arriving and having to get to know 100 people already in place,” he explains. “It was just a great fit.” 

The ambition for Jensen is clear. “Winning Le Mans is my big focus and I want to win it with McLaren,” declares Jensen. “Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.”

There are also other ambitions for a driver who continued to race in P2 through his years at Peugeot and also managed to get his bum in a GT car: “The big races are the ones I want to win. I’d love to win overall at the other 24-hour events, Daytona, Spa and the Nurburgring, and the Sebring 12 Hours and Petit, too.

“But if I could choose winning all those races in one year or just winning Le Mans, I’d choose Le Mans. I want to win it so bad.”

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the March 2026 issue and subscribe today. 

2026 IMSA LMP2 campaign will build Jensen’s relationship with United

Photo by: Brandon Badraoui / Lumen via Getty Images