Racing

`4:39:31`

before I decided, you know what? I can take this all the way. My great hero in racing is Tom Kristensen, fellow Dane. The Mr. Le Mans, as they call him. The greatest endurance race in the world. The 24 hours of Le Mans has been won more times than any other by Tom Kristensen. He won the race nine times. So Tom just really turned me onto Le Mans. I've been watching Le Mans since I think the '80s. I have my earliest memories of watching that on TV. The race has been going since I think 20s. But in the '80s I got kind of into it. And then in the late '90s, early 2000s when Tom started winning, I like pretty much every other Dane started watching the race almost religiously. So I thought, you know what? I wanna get to Le Mans. And this is the magic thing about racing, that if I get into basketball, like I can't set a realistic expectation that I'm gonna play in the NBA, then I'm gonna go to the finals. Or I get into tennis and I'm gonna play at Wimbledon, that just doesn't happen.

`4:40:32`

But racing thing is special in this way because it requires a fair amount of money to keep these cars running. It's really expensive. It's like having a small startup. You need to fly a bunch of people around the world and buy expensive equipment and so forth. So you need a bunch of capital. And I had some through the success of the company. So I could do it, which meant that I could get to Le Mans. So I set that as my goal. I wanna get to Le Mans. And I started racing in real competition 2009. And three years later in 2012, I was at the grid of Le Mans for the first time. — We should say, so Le Mans, 24-hour race endurance. I mean, this is insane. — There are three drivers, mind you. So it's not like one guy just drive for 20 hours, 24 hours straight. But still, it's a pretty tough race both physically and mentally, especially mentally. When you've been up for 24 plus hours, you're not quite as sharp as when you first wake up. And this is funny about Le Mans too. It starts at around four o'clock in the afternoon. So you've already been up for half a day

`4:41:33`

by the time the race starts. And then there's 24 hours to go before you're done. And you'll be in the car for anywhere from usually an hour and a half to a maximum of four hours. The regulations say four out of six is the max you can do. I've spent perhaps two and a half hours in a single stint at Le Mans. It's pretty taxing. You're going 200 miles an hour into some of these turns, and there's another 60 cars on track. Whenever I'm in my normal category, which is the LMP2 category, I have GT cars, which are more like a Ferrari and a Porsche that I have to overtake. And then I have these hypercar, which is the top class that are overtaking me. So you got a lot going on and you gotta stay sharp for two and a half hours straight to do that. That is just a guaranteed way to get incredible flow for long, long stretches of time. That's why you get addicted to it. That was why I got addicted. — You gotta talk me through this video. This video of you in these LMP2s. — Oh, yes. — This is such a cool. This is so cool.

`4:42:34`

— And this was probably my favorite battle of my career. — [Commentator] And Heinemeier Hansson has beat past to add five... — Yeah, so this is me driving against Nico Muller at the Shanghai International Circuit. — You're on the outside here? — I'm on the outside in the... — How cool is it? — Blue and white. And we go a whole track around with basically a piece of paper between a seat down this back straight. I get so close to him because I wanna force him over on the other side of the track, such that he can't just box me in. And we've been fighting already at this point for basically 40 minutes straight. I've been managing to keep this professional driver behind me for 40 minutes. And he finally passes me, but we just keep the battle on for the whole time. And it really just shows both these kinds of cars. The Le Mans prototypes. We don't actually ever touch. We get within about an inch. And keep going around Shanghai circuit too. — What a cool. How did you get so good? Like what? I mean that's a fascinating story, right? That you are able to get so good. — I'm pretty good for the kind of driver I am,

`4:43:36`

which is called the gentleman driver, which means I'm not a professional driver. And like many good gentlemen drivers, when we're at our really best, we can be quite competitive with even professional drivers who have been doing this their whole life. The difference between us and the professionals is the professionals could do it every time or more or less every time. So I can't be this good all the time. When everything is just right, I can be competitive with professional drivers, but that's not how you win championships. That's not how you get paid by factories to drive. You gotta be good every time you go out. So that's a huge difference. But some of it was also just, I really put my mind to it by the time I realized race cars is what I want to do as my serious hobby. I put in thousands of hours. — Have you crashed? What's the worst crash? — I've had a lot of crashes, but thankfully, knock on wood, I haven't had any crashes where I've gotten really seriously hurt. — Have you like wrecked the car? — Oh yes, oh yes. I've wrecked many car. — So what's that feel like? Just you wreck a car.