Throughout the 2026 edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours, DSC Academy trainee Natalie Johnston will be regularly checking in with Peugeot Hypercar driver Malthe Jakobsen, to gain insight on what life is like in the paddock and out on track for a driver in the top class, racing for a hometown favourite.
In the first of this a multi-part series, Jakobsen shares his experience of Scrutineering and the Test Day. Keep tabs on DSC over the next week for the second and third instalments!
22-year-old Malthe Jakobsen is in his second season of competing at the highest level of sportscar racing, but his mindset is that of a much more experienced driver. The Danish driver fully understands the importance of not just executing on track, but also of everything behind the scenes that may go unnoticed, including his responsibilities and every branch of the Peugeot team.
With his debut Le Mans Hypercar class entry done and dusted in 2025, Jakobsen comes into this year’s race knowing more specifically what to expect and what is expected of him.
Scrutineering on Friday saw him click easily into the brand-ambassador role of being a Hypercar driver in WEC. At the Place de la République on Friday, Jakobsen and his fellow drivers fulfilled media duties, interacted with fans, and represented the French marque ahead of the biggest race of the year.
“I had a very busy and long day on Friday with a dinner event in the evening,” says Jakobsen. “We had scrutineering in town, there was lots of interviews and lots of stuff going on,” said Jakobsen on Sunday afternoon. But you know that’s a part of the job as well as driving.”
In 2023 and 2024, Jakobsen raced for COOL Racing in the LMP2 class, finishing second in LMP2 Pro-Am in 2023 with Alexandre Coigny and Nicolas Lapierre. The level of pressure and attention has escalated from his role as a burgeoning young driver in a prominent LMP2 seat to fighting for the overall win at Le Mans.
Now he represents not just a team or even a major manufacturer, but the host nation of the world’s biggest race.
Jakobsen appears to greet this would-be challenge for any driver in the sport with an attitude which can only be described as sunny, his second time around. Benefitting from his experience here last year with Peugeot, the driver can take a more laid-back approach and soak it all in.
“I would say 2025 was a very different experience to 2024 and 2023. Because the difference between representing an LMP2 compared to a car manufacturer like Peugeot, and I think probably also being a French manufacturer at our home race here, makes it even more unique and even more special,” he explains.
“With all of the French fans who are here already for the testing, you feel a lot of them are supporting us because we are the locals and we are, let’s say, the ‘home heroes.’
In the end, it’s a day off. You’re not driving, there’s no pressure on you apart from just trying to be smiling and enjoy it
“Knowing what was waiting on Friday in town made me approach the whole day and the whole experience much more relaxed, compared to what I was doing last year.
“I also had more time to enjoy it, you know, to put a smile on my face and just be relaxed and enjoy it. Because in the end, it’s a day off. You’re not driving, there’s no pressure on you apart from just trying to be smiling and enjoy it.”
Packed schedules between key on-track sessions add to drivers’ mental load of performing at the highest level. When asked about his personal schedule through the early days of the Le Mans calendar, Jakobsen took a moment to give the Peugeot communications and PR team props for organising his weekend so that an overload of obligations did not carry over into Saturday, crucially giving the team the headspace to prepare for Sunday’s testing.
“I think they did it well, because it was all done and dusted on Friday, and then on Saturday we could focus a bit more on the track walk, you know, preparing for today, and left us a little bit more free for [Sunday], and we could focus on driving.”
The Dane expressed that at this point in the lead-up to the race, the #94 team’s focus is on executing the engineers’ conceptual plans for the car during testing, having developed run plans and incremental changes over multiple months that are now coming to fruition.
The number one goal for this period of learning is, first and foremost, to keep the car on track and running as much as possible.
“The engineers are always dreaming, I would say, a little bit about all the test items they have been working on since last year,” Jakobsen says.
“There’s always some issues during the race, or during the qualifying sims that they find areas and say, ‘this is the key priority, this is the second priority, we know we want to try this and that, to try to solve these issues.’”
To Jakobsen, executing the ideal Test Day meant giving the engineers as much information as possible, running cleanly, and not putting in harm’s way on day one of running at La Sarthe.
The young driver appreciates that both his efforts and possible errors as a driver have direct consequences for the wider Peugeot family, and identifies that the crew’s well-being throughout this long lead-in is directly correlated to his race results.
“I think the most important thing is that we managed to do a lot of laps [in testing FP1]. There were no reliability issues, and us drivers didn’t mess it up, as far as I’m aware! We brought back the car in one piece, so hopefully the mechanics also can get a little bit of rest.”
“Imagine today [we] had a massive shunt, and the mechanics had to either fix a car or rebuild a brand new car. They would be exhausted from tonight, and then be on the back foot for the whole week until the race, and I think the chances then of anybody in the team making a mistake will be a lot more likely during the race.”
Pace is extremely relative during testing, so getting a feel for the car around this track and maximising the amount of data the engineers can work with are the true goals in these sessions. Jakobsen looks to keep his focus ahead, and narrowed on the car’s performance going into the heart of race week.
“It’s very difficult to tell. I think it’s very easy mentally to get drafted away if you compare yourself to all the other competitors.
“In the end, you just have to focus on your own task and our team, and then we’ll see what the rest of the week is going to be afterwards.”
