I’ve never been one to put stock in fate, but over time, I’ve come to believe that the circumstances of our birth can say something about the shape of our lives. I was born in the dead of night—and remain an insomniac to this day. Tom Kristensen, however, was born at a petrol station in Hobro, Denmark, in 1967. His father, Calle, ran a service station and raced stock cars. His grandfather drove trucks. He was born on the move, and his whole life has followed suit.

Kristensen’s path into motorsport began with a go-kart race at Danish proving ground Jyllands-Ringen when he was six. By 13, he was competing in Formula Nordic. Over the next two decades, he would carve out a reputation as the most successful endurance driver in history. His first 24 Hours of Le Mans win came in 1997 with Joest Racing—secured just four days after signing the contract. He went on to claim eight more victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, including six consecutive wins between 2000 and 2005. He also won Sebring a record six times and took the 2013 FIA World Endurance Championship. But Kristensen is quick to emphasise that endurance racing is about more than simply driving faster than the rest.

“In endurance, you’re constantly being challenged,” he tells us in a recent interview, set up ahead of Rolex’s new mini documentary Don’t Blink (pictured above) featuring the longtime brand ambassador and some dizzying glimpses of a life lived apex-to-apex. “Traffic, tyre strategy, weather, team decisions—you’re always adapting. If your mindset is about winning the next corner, you’ll crash. You need to give yourself the freedom to be a little slower in the moment to optimise the full picture.” At Le Mans, this often means improvising on the fly, sometimes on slick tyres in a downpour. “It’s like rushing into a freshly cleaned bathroom,” he jokes. “You’re slipping everywhere.”

Even communication with the team plays a role in this dance between caution and aggression. “There are moments when the engineers say, ‘We need two more stints on these tyres—can you do it?’ And you just say yes. You change your style, drive more gently. That’s the mental game of endurance.”

As Kristensen laid out in his 2021 memoir Mr Le Mans, the physical toll of endurance racing is often misunderstood. Braking into Le Mans’ sharp corners can generate up to 5g of force—just shy of what it takes to knock someone out. It requires strong neck and back muscles to hold up your head with all that extra weight whenever the car brakes, drives through curves, or accelerates; you hold your breath at these times, which raises your pulse even further. 

“People outside the sport often had a hard time understanding why I cared so much about my physical shape and stamina,” wrote Kristensen. “Yet, if anyone needed to, I did—not least of all because I was a little bigger and heavier than the average driver.” He goes on to explain that the problem was that he often weighed 75 kilos, whereas most of his competitors and Le Mans buddies, Dindo Capello and Allan McNish, weighed between 60 and 68 kilos. “Ten kilos is quite a difference when you’re driving a [race]car.” That extra weight wasn’t just a number; it could upset the car’s balance or shave crucial seconds off a lap. For Kristensen, training hard wasn’t a vanity project—it was a performance requirement.

Tomorrow’s Endurance

The 2025 edition of Le Mans is shaping up to be one of the most competitive in years, with 23 Hypercars from nine manufacturers gearing up for battle. The test day held yesterday revealed much; Toyota may be on the back foot, Alpine returned to the top class with an encouraging pace, and Ferrari looks poised to defend its crown with technical upgrades that have left rivals nervy. But beneath the lap times and Balance of Power tweaks, the bigger picture is this—Le Mans is evolving.

Kristensen, now a commentator, keeps close tabs on these shifts. When asked about the future of endurance racing and its broader automotive relevance, he was clear: “Hydrogen in terms of sports cars is going… and it’s running. The ACO and FIA have been running a hydrogen program. That’s already the immediate future.”

Long-time WEC favourites Toyota have publicly committed to hydrogen in alignment with this vision. But Kristensen also sees value in legacy fuels done better. “We see a little bit of tendency that you also want to use biofuel, synthetic fuel… and optimise what we experienced from the earlier days,” he tells us. “Electric is there, but of course when you have 24-hour races, electric is only part of the hybrid situation.”

Synthetic fuels could, he believes, help motorsport “run more conventional engines… cleaner and cleaner,” while keeping costs manageable. “Some of the synthetic and biofuel is getting so clean and so possible to construct and to optimise,” he explains, “that they can probably, in that sense, get the cost down… because the cost has been a big issue.”

It’s a refreshingly pragmatic outlook, characteristic of Kristensen’s no-frills racing philosophy while echoing some of F1 legend Sebastian Vettel’s post-racing ventures. The goal isn’t to cling to the past or fully electrify the sport—it’s to make sure it endures.

After the Chequered Flag

In retirement, Kristensen hasn’t drifted far from the world that defined him. “I’m very blessed to still work so much in the sport,” he tells us. “If I didn’t have that—if I wasn’t involved with Audi, with Michelin, with Rolex, or doing commentary—I can understand how it could become an issue.”

He’s fully aware of how disorienting life after racing can be. “I can very easily see it can be an issue for anyone,” he muses, “because it takes so much energy to be in professional sport. The demand of being there, of optimising your performance…that takes away other qualities of a person.” But Kristensen is now focused on rebalancing. “There are things you can optimise after retirement. Things you can learn. And I’m very blessed with my family and kids. I learn from them—especially my youngest.”

He offers one clear piece of advice to fellow athletes facing that transition. “If you’re a sportsman, when you retire, make sure you have a family. Don’t retire as a sportsman alone. That can probably be a very grim situation.”

Not long after he stepped away from the sport, Kristensen marked the occasion in a way only a racer might. “I bought a Rolex, and I asked my wife if she could get something inscribed on the back,” he recalls. “She said, ‘Sure, but you can’t change it.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s fine.’” He laughs, then delivers the punchline with a twinkle in his eye.
“I thought I’d get something like ‘With a big kiss’ or ‘Love you’...but no. It just says, ‘Drive carefully.’”