Porsche’s selected driver is following in her father’s wake and this weekend will be competing for the third time at La Sarthe

Casual observers of this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours might be forgiven for believing that despite boasting a grid of 60 cars, encompassing 180 drivers, the meeting concerns but two.

Inevitably it is Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button who have caused the furore as the two former Formula One world champions attempt to add winning the world’s greatest grand prix d’endurance to their CVs. Yet, as always, this magnificent event is so much more and for Denmark’s Christina Nielsen, racing at Le Mans is almost a family affair.

Nielsen is competing for the third time at Circuit de la Sarthe, having already blazed a trail with a hugely successful career. She competes for the Ebimotors team in the GTE-AM class in a Porsche 911 RSR. Porsche are the race’s most successful manufacturer with 19 overall wins and have chosen Nielsen as the first woman with whom they have an official association, with the title of Porsche selected driver.

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For the 26-year-old it is honour and pleasure. Her father, Lars Erik Nielsen, drove a Porsche in four of his five runs at Le Mans between 2004 and 2008. In 2007 Nielsen attended the race to watch him when she was 15. This time he will be at the track to watch her.

She is in the car wholly by right. Having begun karting relatively late at the age of 13, she threw herself into the sport. “In my family you either don’t do it or you give it 100%,” she says. “When you do, the goal keeps getting higher and higher.”

Her ambition was rewarded in 2016 when she became the first woman to win the IMSA sportscar championship in the US in the GT Daytona class and remarkably repeated the feat the following year. The class is hugely competitive, as it will be at Le Mans, but the close racing is the attraction for Nielsen.

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It was Denmark’s Tom Kristensen who really put the race on the map in their home country, becoming the most successful driver at Le Mans with nine wins, but Nielsen too has made her mark and is putting it to good use. She is active in the Danish Women’s Society. “Our common goal in the organisation is to promote equality,” she explains. “So in a sport like racing, where men and women compete equally, to have those results to back me up is really important.”

She has the credentials then but others still have lessons to be learned and there is some exasperation already at Le Mans. “I get annoyed when I am in a drivers’ briefing and the race director for the third year in a row continues to say: ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen.’ Instead of ladies and gentlemen, or he could just say ‘drivers’. I picked them up on it for the last two years but this year I didn’t because it didn’t change, so all I can do is go out and do my thing on the race track.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christina Nielsen with her Le Mans 2018 co-drivers - Fabio Babini, left, and Erik Maris. Photograph: Porsche

When Nielsen does, she knows she will not be the centre of attention and this week it has been impossible to ignore Alonso and Button. However, another former Porsche driver, Derek Bell, who won four of his five race victories for them, remembered gloriously in his new book, All My Porsche Races, believes the same principles for success apply across the grid when drivers share the car for 24 hours.

“You have to work as a team,” says Bell. “You have to have total respect for your team-mates. The important thing was sitting in the car and saying: ‘We can win this bastard.’ And you have confidence your team-mates agree.”

The important thing was sitting in the car, saying: ‘We can win this bastard.’ Derek Bell

Bell drove with the great Jacky Ickx for three of his five wins, a formidable pairing indeed, but good team-mates are only part of the story. The 8.46‑mile La Sarthe circuit has unique demands but drivers must also cope with the volume of traffic and the high closing speeds between classes – all skills Nielsen possesses but ones that Alonso and Button must learn in short order.

“They both have enough brains but you have to be able to analyse,” Bell says. “You mustn’t look at every gap and think it is a chance to go past and win. You have to think: ‘Will I benefit, or will it bugger up my lap?’”

He is optimistic, however, that both have what it takes to prove themselves at the first attempt on the 24. “Fernando will adapt very quickly as he has been in the car already and Jenson will adapt because he knows what he has to do to win,” he says. “It’s more of a thinking race than F1 or any other.”

Nielsen know all this already and brings a professional detachment to the maelstrom around the superstars. “It’s great that they are part of making it a success,” she says. “But once they are behind the wheel they are just like everyone else.”

For her it is an event greater than any individual, no matter their fame. “Le Mans is so much bigger than anything else,” she says. “Every driver leaves with the same feeling: that I hope I can be back here next year – another 364 days and I can’t wait.”