Le Mans 24-hour: Meet Jakob Andreasen, Lewis Hamilton's former engineer masterminding United Autosports bid for glory in ultimate endurance test

The 54-year-old is back in the French countryside this weekend, perched on the pitwall of the United Autosports garage trying to help the Wakefield-based team win motorsport’s most exacting examination for a second time in four years.

And Andreasen – he is English despite his Scandinavian-sounding name – is as excited about being there as he would to be at any race track for any race in the world.

“It’s no different, it never is, and that’s the beauty of it,” says Andreasen, his eyes lighting up as his mind wanders to the famous circuit.

“You do the race walk on the bits that are public road and you ask yourself ‘do we really race here?’. The famous Arnage with houses next to the road, a supermarket like there always was.

“Every year you turn up and it’s the same, it’s part of the charm that it doesn’t really change. Ok they’ve tweaked the circuit here and there, but essentially it doesn’t change.”

Andreasen first experienced Le Mans in 1997, working on strategy for McLaren.

He was just starting out in motorsport after completing an engineering degree at Sheffield Hallam University. It would be nearly a quarter of a century before he got back to Le Mans, 17 of the intervening years spent in Formula 1.

He enjoyed a decade working his way up at McLaren, two years with Force India and latterly five years with Williams running the engineering department.

“We lost the title in 2007 against Kimi Raikkonen with the gearbox issue ” he remembers of his time working with Hamilton. “And we nearly lost it again in 2008 on the last lap but Lewis hung on.

“But 10 years at McLaren is enough for anybody. Don’t get me wrong it’s a great place to work but I needed a little bit…” he tails off, trying to find the right words.

“Force India at the time had a very positive attitude and I really liked that. They were overachieving for a team of their size.

“Seventeen years in all in Formula 1… I look back now and think blimey did I really do that? But I was ready for a change.”

Toyota gave him a way out and route back into hypercars. He moved to the team’s base in Cologne and returned to Le Mans in 2020, helping them win the 24-hour epic in each of his three years with the team.

But living between a work base in Germany and a home in Oxfordshire was proving tough, and he needed to move back to England. That’s when a return to Yorkshire, where he had studied more than two decades earlier, came about.

“The position of technical director with United came available and it seemed the right fit,” he says. “The ambitions of the team, where they were already – a good reputation, well-run business, aspirational – and where I was. I like doing specific projects, I’m not one for just doing the day job. Bringing a long-term plan to take the business forward very much aligned with what (owners) Richard Dean and Zak Brown have as their vision.”

United are a team on the rise. Although Andreasen has had to take a step down from the hypercar level Toyota have dominated in at Le Mans, the team he has joined are among the best in the LMP2 class.

Dean, a Yorkshireman, led United to victory in the 2020 race of Le Mans, in only their fourth attempt at the race. It was a crowning achievement they shared with only a handful of sponsors and mechanics and in front of empty grandstands due to the pandemic.

For the 100th edition of the Le Mans 24-hour which begins at 4pm CET today (3pm UK time), there will be a record crowd of 300,000 fans in attendance.

“Just think about that,” says Andreasen, the eyes lighting up again.

“The centenary edition means a lot to me. I’m an engineer from a science and physics background, but the history of motorsport, the human part of it, the car history of it, is really important to me. It’s very special.”

And for him, winning this particular race is better than taking the chequered flag in any other.

“As a single race Le Mans is by far the best race there is,” he beams.

“Because there’s the personal challenge – can you actually do it, physically and mentally, the 24 hours? There’s that to contend with.

“But it’s much more of a team effort than Formula 1. If you think about pit stops – in Formula 1 you’ve got 18 people on the pit stops and it’s a very defined, choreographed process in two or three seconds. Physically it’s not that demanding.

“For us sports cars in Le Mans, it is so much more physically demanding. You’ve only got four guys doing the pit stop, so they have to run out carrying the wheel and the gun, go all around the car and they’ve got to do it 35 times. The rear wheel is 35 kilos and the gun itself is probably about 10 kilos. So physically it’s harder.

“And then you’ve got three drivers who need to work together. All through the race the drivers are feeding back to the next driver who’s going to get in: ‘watch the bump at turn four’ or ‘take a tighter line for turn three because it’s a bit damp on the outside’.

“And another thing is you never give up. Unlike Formula 1 where if there’s a small incident that’s it you’re out of the points your day is over, for Le Mans you never give up no matter what problems you have, you fix them and you carry on.

“You practice much more fixing problems and preparing for them.

“It’s the ultimate test of an organisation: never give up, teamwork, the personal endurance challenge, so for me it’s by far the best event, including Monaco.”

As he enters his fifth Le Mans, and his first for a Yorkshire team that has over 100 employees working at the race, he is constantly learning about how to pace himself throughout the day – even to the extent of planning his toilet breaks.

“It sounds daft and obvious but it is such a long time. It’s the personal endurance, can you do it?” Andreasen asks rhetorically.

“The first year you do it it’s terrifying – you really have no clue what to expect because you cannot practice staying up for 36 hours.

“Last year I had a number of processes to manage myself and I was fine.

“Have one cup of tea on race morning, don’t have one at 11 o’clock – because you’ve got to plan your own personal pit stop – I went eight hours without a wee, because something could happen while I’m at the toilet. You have to think about these things.”

It all adds up to making winning Le Mans sweeter than any other victory.

“The most satisfying for me was definitely last year with Toyota,” recalls Andreasen. “We had a plan with the three drivers, with the pit crew, we had everything as much as we could tidied up; a plan for every eventuality and it ran like clockwork, it was metronomic. We’d be on the pitwall and you’d look at the fuel guy and make eye contact and know instantly, everything was planned and rehearsed.

“We’d used a simulator to rehearse and practice which is something we’ll introduce here at United eventually.

“We’re not quite there yet, it’s definitely on our development list, to have use of a simulator to develop the car, set-up, but also driver training and practice all eventualities.”

Victory this weekend for the Wakefield-based team will go a long way to helping them expand their operation further. They have two cars in the busiest classification on the Le Mans grid, and both are in good shape in the World Endurance Championship of which Le Mans is the fourth of seven rounds with points counting double this weekend.

Car No 22 driven by Phil Hanson, Filipe Albuquerque and Frederik Lubin leads the championship after three rounds, with United’s No 23 car piloted by Josh Pierson, Tom Blomqvist and Olly Jarvis in third place.

It will be a busy, relentless, non-stop weekend for everyone involved, and Andreasen cannot wait for the lights to go out.

“My favourite time is dusk to early light,” he smiles. “I like the fact the race starts late, because you’re very quickly into the dusk. There’s a real buzz about the place, you’ve done your first pit stop, the fans are starting to filter back to the campsites to get drunk, and when the car goes past you check the data, do your radio call, you see the red light of the car going up into turn one and it’s just such a cool feeling.”