Just two races into the 2025 FIA WEC season, 21-year-old Danish racer Malthe Jakobsen already feels fully integrated into his new role as a full-time driver for Peugeot TotalEnergies.
Jakobsen, after two years as a prospect for the French factory, through roles as a junior and later a reserve driver, was promoted to the top table to drive the #94 with Loic Duval and Stoffel Vandoorne for this year.
“I’ve been part of the team for two years, so it feels like one big family to me, even though it’s a job and the WEC is a big circus,” he told reporters ahead of track action in Belgium. “It’s a good environment and everyone is looking after me and helping me with the resources I need to do the job on track.
“I was able to learn a lot before this year by being a small part of teams in test sessions and following the races, when I was here at Spa and Imola last year as a reserve driver, watching the others over the shoulder.
His experience in LMP3 and LMP2 competition in recent years has also helped him hit the ground running at the top rung of the sportscar ladder.
“There’s a big difference on the championship side between WEC and ELMS, there’s a lot more spectators, for instance,” he added. “And then, from a team perspective, there are so many more people involved in the project. With teams for me in the past, we may do a strategy meeting with, say, the team manager and one race engineer, now I’m on a able with 15 people every time.
“But I’m 100 per cent sure that having endurance racing experience in my backpack before arriving has been good for me, and not just one year of LMP2, but five seasons, and I’m still only 21.
“I’m still mainly listening to my teammates, though, as there’s a big difference in experience between Loic and I, for instance.”
While Jakobsen feels at home in the team, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s been a tough start to the season for him and his teammates in results terms. Two 12th place finishes see them sitting 13th in the standings on zero points. The hope is that things can turn around this weekend.
Technical director Olivier Jansonnie was certainly pleased with the team’s showing during a test on the Spa circuit in April, which saw the Peugoet team share the track with Porsche, BMW and Aston Martin.
It gave them four manufacturers a head start on getting to grips with the areas of the circuit which were resurfaced last summer, which Jansonnie expects to lead to significantly quicker lap times.
“It was a positive test for us, the drivers were happy with the car here,” he said. “The track is very different to last year because of the resurfacing. Part of the result will come from the optimisation of tyre strategy, and we need to assess the amount of degradation we are having in practice.
“The two tyres we ran were Medium and Hard, and in the end, the Soft was selected, which I believe was the right choice. There was a push from Michelin to run the Hards during that test to assess them.
“What we are seeing in tyre behaviour is completely different. The lap times are going to come down a lot, because the track has been resurfaced in places that are very important for lap time.”
Images courtesy of DPPI and Paul Foster
