Masters of La Sarthe: most successful winning drivers at the Le Mans 24 Hours

All four of his victories were achieved with Ferrari.

His 1958 win, shared with Phil Hill in a Ferrari 250 TR/58, came in a race blighted by 15 hours of rain, with Hill driving through the night in conditions he later described as extraordinary. It was Hill’s first Le Mans win and the first for the pair’s formidable partnership.

In 1960, Gendebien paired with fellow Belgian Paul Frere in the Ferrari 250 TR 59/60, winning a 314-lap race in which reliability proved crucial, as is often the case at Le Mans.

He returned in 1961 alongside Hill in the 250 TRI/61; Ferrari took the top three places, and the pairing broke their own distance record. The same year, Hill became the only driver in history to win Le Mans and the Formula 1 title in the same season.

In 1962, the duo partnered for the last time in the Ferrari 330 TRI/LM, and Gendebien crossed the line first to take his fourth and final victory.

He retired from racing shortly afterwards, leaving behind an unbeaten Le Mans record that no driver would surpass until Jacky Ickx‘s fifth win in 1981.

Henri Pescarolo (1972, 1973, 1974, 1984)

Henri Pescarolo holds a record no other driver has come close to matching: 33 starts at Le Mans, from 1966 to 1999.

His four victories are spread across 12 years, with a decade separating the third from the fourth, and they were earned through intelligent racecraft and sheer endurance of character, qualities the Frenchman displayed in abundance throughout a career defined by the Circuit de la Sarthe.

Pescarolo had survived a serious accident at Le Mans in 1969 after his Matra 640 caught fire and left him with burns and broken vertebrae, but came back as though nothing had happened.

In 1972 he claimed his first Le Mans victory alongside Graham Hill in the Matra-Simca MS670, a landmark win achieved in treacherous wet conditions and one that formed part of Hill’s unique triple crown of the Monaco GP, the Indianapolis 500 and Le Mans.

In 1973 and 1974, Pescarolo repeated the feat with Gerard Larrousse as co-driver, the dominant Matra MS670B leading virtually from the front in both editions.

The 1973 race underlined Matra’s superiority as Pescarolo and Larrousse beat the rival Ferraris with authority, while the 1974 victory, secured in Matra’s farewell Le Mans appearance, completed a remarkable hat-trick for both driver and marque.

No French driver has since matched three consecutive wins at the race.

After Matra’s withdrawal from motor sport, Pescarolo’s Le Mans career continued without trophies until 1984, when Reinhold Joest offered him a Porsche 956 at a time when the car was the class of the field.

Paired with Klaus Ludwig, he won again, becoming the first Frenchman to take four Le Mans victories, and one of the last winning two-driver crews in the race’s history, as three-driver line-ups became a lot more common thereafter.

After retiring from driving in 1999, Pescarolo became a team owner, continuing to chase Le Mans glory from the pitwall until 2012.

Yannick Dalmas (1992, 1994, 1995, 1999)

Yannick Dalmas achieved something no other driver has managed in the history of the 24 Hours: four victories with four entirely different manufacturers.

The first win came in 1992 at the wheel of the Peugeot 905, alongside Derek Warwick and Mark Blundell, in a race marked by rain and a long duel with Toyota. Peugeot’s advantage in the wet proved decisive.

It was also the first win for a V10-powered prototype in the event’s history, signalling a technological shift in endurance racing.

In 1994, Dalmas was part of a Dauer-Porsche 962 LM crew alongside Mauro Baldi and Hurley Haywood; Toyota‘s front-runner faltered late, handing them an unlikely victory. The race became famous for Porsche exploiting GT rules with a road-legalised 962-derived car.

Dalmas’s 1995 win was perhaps the most improbable of all. McLaren had entered its F1 GTR and few gave it serious chances in wet conditions that persisted through much of the race, but the car’s reliability and the composure of Dalmas, JJ Lehto, and Masanori Sekiya told a different story.

Dalmas capitalised on a late-race mechanical setback for the leading Harrods McLaren, taking first position in the final hours and holding off a flat-out charge from Mario Andretti’s Courage-Porsche to secure a historic victory by less than a lap.

Four years later, after stints as a Porsche factory driver, Dalmas joined BMW for 1999.

The V12 LMR, developed partly in partnership with Williams, proved the fastest car in the race, and Dalmas, Joachim Winkelhock and Pierluigi Martini held off Toyota to the finish.

In doing so, Dalmas equalled Pescarolo as the most successful French driver in Le Mans history, while retaining the unique distinction of having won with Peugeot, Porsche, McLaren and BMW.

Sébastien Buemi (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022)

Sébastien Buemi contested 55 grands prix for Toro Rosso in F1 between 2009 and 2011, but since joining Toyota in 2012, he has become one of the defining figures of the manufacturer’s long pursuit of Le Mans glory.

Buemi has become central to Toyota’s rise from nearly-men to serial winners.

His first win came in 2018, alongside Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso in the No8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid — the Japanese car maker’s maiden Le Mans victory after several years of heartbreak and disappointment.

It was not a chaotic breakthrough snatched by luck, but a controlled and cathartic success, delivered by a team carrying the weight of its devastating near-miss in 2016 and years of frustration before that.

Alonso had joined the programme specifically to complete motor sport’s triple crown, and his presence energised the whole team. But Buemi’s contribution was just as important as an already proven endurance racer and world champion.

The same trio won again in 2019, simultaneously claiming the FIA World Endurance Championship in a race that doubled as the season finale for the first time.

That victory had an extra layer of tension because Toyota’s two cars were effectively racing each other for both Le Mans and the world title, and Buemi, Alonso and Nakajima delivered under pressure.

With Alonso’s departure, Buemi and Nakajima were joined by Brendon Hartley for the delayed 2020 edition, completing three successive victories in a spectator-free race dominated by Toyota in the absence of serious LMP1 opposition.

Even so, the circumstances were far from routine: held in September rather than June because of the pandemic, the race had an eerie, closed-doors atmosphere that made the achievement feel historically unusual as well as statistically significant.

A fourth win followed in 2022 with Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa in the GR010 Hybrid. That success mattered because it came in Toyota’s new Le Mans Hypercar, proving Buemi could carry his winning pedigree into a fresh technical era rather than merely extending a run in the outgoing LMP1 generation.

Buemi is now one victory away from the five-win club and could achieve it as early as this year.

Derek Bell (1975, 1981, 1982, 1986, 1987)

No British driver has won at Le Mans more often than Derek Bell, his five victories highlighting how he was ideally suited to the demands of 24-hour racing.

Bell’s first win came in 1975, sharing the Gulf Mirage GR8 with Jacky Ickx, the opening chapter of one of endurance racing’s most celebrated driver pairings.

The two men reconvened in the Porsche 936/81 in 1981, a race notable for Bell collapsing on the podium from exhaustion after driving for 12 hours without power steering despite the victory appearing comfortable.

In 1982, the partnership delivered again, this time at the wheel of the brand-new Porsche 956 at its Le Mans debut.

Ickx and Bell led a 1-2-3 in the famous Rothmans livery, the car’s maiden appearance at the circuit yielding an immediate victory and signalling the beginning of a new Porsche era at Le Mans, one in which Bell would remain a central figure.

After Ickx retired, Bell found new partners in Hans-Joachim Stuck and Al Holbert, and the results were equally impressive.

In 1986 and 1987, the trio drove the Rothmans Porsche 962 to back-to-back wins, completing Bell’s tally of five.

He also took two World Sportscar Championship titles in 1985 and 1986.

Emanuele Pirro (2000, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007)

Emanuele Pirro arrived at Le Mans via Formula 1, racing for Benetton and Scuderia Italia in the early 1990s, but it was in endurance racing – and specifically at the wheel of an Audi – that he found his greatest achievements.

His five victories span just eight years and are bound together by an almost unbroken partnership with Frank Biela.

His first three wins came in immediate succession: 2000, 2001 and 2002, always sharing with Biela and Tom Kristensen in the Audi R8. They became the first trio ever to stand on the Le Mans podium three consecutive times together.

The 2000 win was Audi’s maiden Le Mans victory, the No8 R8 covering 368 laps to lead a 1-2-3 for the German manufacturer. That result announced not just a successful debut for a new car, but the beginning of a period of technical and operational control in which Audi seemed to raise the standard for the entire race.

The 2001 race ran in persistent rain and was emotionally charged following the death of Michele Alboreto in testing earlier that year; Pirro drove flawlessly. In such conditions, his smoothness and judgement became especially valuable, and the win carried a sombre undertone for Audi even as it confirmed that the previous year’s triumph had been no one-off.

The 2002 hat-trick only reinforced how dominant the combination of driver, team and car had become. By then, the Audi R8 had established itself as one of Le Mans’ defining machines, and Pirro, Biela and Kristensen were the fixed point around which the race revolved.

After Audi’s factory withdrawal, Pirro waited and later returned when the manufacturer mounted its works comeback with the R10 TDI in 2006 — the first diesel-powered prototype to win Le Mans — sharing with Biela and Marco Werner, and that victory added a new dimension to his legacy because it linked him not only with winning, but with one of the race’s major technological turning points.

The following year, the same trio defended the victory in the No1 car, holding off the new Peugeot 908. That 2007 success was perhaps especially significant because Audi no longer enjoyed the same margin of superiority as in the R8 years, so Pirro’s fifth win felt less like the continuation of a dynasty than the successful defence of one.

Franck Biela (2000, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007)

Biela’s Le Mans record is, in a sense, Pirro’s seen from the other side of the garage: five victories in exactly the same years, with exactly the same team-mate.

What distinguishes him is that Biela was rarely regarded as the fastest driver in the trio, and yet proved utterly indispensable to every one of their triumphs.

He came to endurance racing after success in touring cars, winning the DTM in 1991 and the BTCC in 1996, both with Audi.

When the manufacturer moved him into prototype racing in the late 1990s, he had no experience of the machinery but adapted without drama.

In 2000, alongside Kristensen and Pirro in the No8 R8, he helped deliver Audi its first Le Mans win.

The back-to-back wins of 2001 and 2002 confirmed the trio as the era’s pre-eminent crew.

Throughout this era, Biela also spearheaded Audi’s sports car invasion of North America.

Concurrently with his Le Mans exploits, he proved dominant in the American Le Mans Series, securing two ALMS championships in 2003 and 2005, alongside four prestigious victories at the 12 Hours of Sebring.

His return to factory Le Mans duty in 2006 and 2007 — now with Marco Werner replacing Kristensen — produced two more victories in the diesel R10 TDI.

Jacky Ickx (1969, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1981, 1982)

Before Kristensen set his record, there was Jacky Ickx — Monsieur Le Mans, the man who held the record for 23 years.

The Belgian’s six victories spanned 13 years and two quite distinct chapters of his career, encompassing three different decades and machinery ranging from a Ford GT40 to a Porsche 956.

The first came in 1969, in a Ford GT40 shared with Jackie Oliver. Ickx walked slowly to his car at the start — a deliberate protest against the traditional sprint across the track that he considered dangerously unsafe — and overcame a deficit to Hans Herrmann‘s Porsche 908 to win.

It was one of the most dramatic finishes in Le Mans history, and the symbolism of Ickx’s protest was heightened by the fact that the old-style start was abandoned thereafter, making his victory feel like both a sporting and cultural turning point.

After a gap of six years, Ickx returned to win three times in succession for Gulf and Porsche. The 1975 victory, shared with Derek Bell in a Gulf Mirage GR8, came in an energy-crisis-era race that favoured efficient machinery over outright pace, and it marked the beginning of Bell and Ickx as one of endurance racing’s great pairings.

In 1976 he won with Gijs van Lennep in the Porsche 936, a result that underlined Porsche’s adaptability at a time when open-top turbocharged prototypes were reshaping the race.

In 1977 he shared victory with Jürgen Barth and Hurley Haywood in the Porsche 936/77, matching Olivier Gendebien’s four-win record.

A fifth and sixth followed in the early 1980s, both again with Bell.

In 1981, Porsche retrieved a pair of 936 chassis from its museum and updated them to competitive specification; Ickx and Bell won by more than 14 laps, a margin that reflected not only Porsche’s ingenuity but Ickx’s enduring authority at Le Mans even deep into a new era of the race.

The 1982 win saw the Porsche 956 make its Le Mans debut with an immediate 1-2-3. That success was especially significant because it showed Ickx could still define the race in the ground-effect Group C era just as he had in the GT40 and 936 years, giving his record a breadth few others could match.

Ickx also won the World Sportscar Championship that year, and retired as the race’s greatest driver – a status he held until Kristensen surpassed him in 2005.

Tom Kristensen (1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2013)

The record stands at nine. Six of those victories were consecutive.

Tom Kristensen arrived at Le Mans for the first time in 1997, having never seen the circuit before practice week, and won outright.

The scale of what followed is almost impossible to contextualise: by the time he was done, he had won at a rate of one in two starts, finished on the podium in all but four of his 18 appearances, and left a margin over the next driver on this list of three victories.

No other sportsman in any major endurance race comes close to that kind of dominance sustained over such a long period.

The debut triumph came in a Porsche WSC-95 run by Joest Racing, Kristensen drafted in as a late replacement to share with Michele Alboreto and Stefan Johansson.

Kristensen learned Le Mans at race speed and under race pressure in a way that announced him as methodical and instinctively fast over long distances.

After retirements in 1998 and 1999, he joined Biela and Pirro in the Audi R8 programme and launched one of the most dominant stretches in the race’s history.

The 2001 win carried particular emotional weight: the team had lost Alboreto, Kristensen’s partner from that debut four years earlier, in testing at the Lausitzring, and incessant rain made the race almost unbearably tense throughout.

The hat-trick of 2002, the first trio to win three successive editions together, was followed by a solo sequence.

A Bentley Speed 8 in 2003, the Audi R8 for the Japanese Goh team in 2004, and the Champion Racing Audi R8 in 2005: three different operations, three different contexts, the same winner.

That variety demonstrated that Kristensen’s record was built on personal quality rather than the resources of a single dominant manufacturer.

That last victory moved him past Ickx’s record of six, a moment the sport recognised with the kind of reverence usually reserved for athletes who redefine what is possible in their discipline.

Two further wins followed: 2008 in the Audi R10 TDI alongside Rinaldo Capello and Allan McNish, the diesel era now fully established, and 2013 – also the year he claimed the FIA World Endurance Championship – in the Audi R18 e-tron quattro with Loïc Duval and McNish.

Nine victories. A number that may stand forever.