Tom Kristensen

Saying someone is/was the world’s greatest racing driver is a mug’s game. So many circumstances —not least of all technology—change so quickly, so how can anybody possibly say that Tazio Nuvolari was a greater driver than Lewis Hamilton, for instance?

Based exclusively on results, however, I feel perfectly safe in saying that Tom Kristensen is the greatest endurance racing driver of his generation, if not of all time. Reason? Because Tom has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans more than anyone else by a country mile. A record nine times, six of them in succession, all between 1997 and 2013, which gives him a 50-percent rate of success. He competed 18 times at Le Mans, and if his car finished, rather than crashing or suffering mechanical ills, he was always on the podium—14 times to be exact. Another statistic for you to ponder: by the time he retired on November 19, 2014, Kristensen had won 11 percent of all the Le Mans races ever held between the first in 1923 and his last victory in 2013.