Mikkel Gaarde Pedersen will enter his second international sportscar season, when the European Le Mans Series and Michelin Le Mans Cup starts in four weeks’ time at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
The seventeen year-old Dane has made a rapid progress through the past three seasons.
He won the Danish Formula 4 Championship in 2023, before moving into the Spanish F4 Championship, but without the preferred results – partly due to a hand injury. So he started looking for other parts of the sport, to have a successful ending to 2024.
Photo: JJ Media
He got a run at the 2024 Ligier European Series season finale in Portimao. Team Virage made a deal with him, to race one of the small Ligier JS P4 sportscars, that has run since 2020. Mikkel set the fastest lap of all at the opening practice, despite being in a field with mostly full season drivers, with plenty of experience in the cars. He followed up with good pace in the two races, but with a teammate who wasn’t as speedy, it only proved that you need speed from both drivers to achieve top results.
But he had already made his mark, and a lot of people in the ELMS and LMC paddock were forming an orderly line to test the young driver in a LMP3 car, in the Rookie test post season.
He got some help from a management company, and they helped striking a deal with DKR Engineering, who really wanted Mikkel to join the team. They made a switch to the brand new Ginetta LMP3 car, which made it necessary to do a lot of testing during the winter. That gave Mikkel the chance to get a few extra kilometers onboard the car, prior to the season.
Once the 2025 season got going, it became quite apparent, that the Ginetta didn’t quite have the same pace as the two competitors from Ligier and Duqueine. So the season not only became a fight with the other teams, but also the car itself, and the aim to find more speed.
The opening round at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya almost looked like a fantastic surprise debut, until the car had to retire with technical issues, during the final hour of the race.
The second round was run at Circuit Paul Ricard in France, and the damp conditions at the start quickly sent them a lap behind the front runners. So at the end of the race, they managed to secure fifth place, quite a distance from the podium.
Photo: JJ Media
Rinaldi Racing gave the young driver an unexpected call, since they needed a driver for the Road To Le Mans race in June 2025, as one of the support races for the 24 hours race. That gave him his first laps at the iconic Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, where he set a new lap record for the LMP3 Pro/Am category. Young Pedersen advanced several places in both races, while he was in the car. He and Steve Parrow ended up in the points in the first of the two races, and that proved very important for Parrow, since those points made him secure second place in the season long LMP3 Pro/Am Championship in the Michelin Le Mans Cup.
He returned to DKR Engineering, to race at the classic Imola venue, where the team sadly were hit by technical issues very early in the race – with Mikkel still to get in the car. So that wasn’t a disappointing round once again.
After the summer break, the team returned to Spa Francorchamps, which turned out to be the probably toughest race of the year, due to the fast turns, where a lot of downforce is needed.
The Silverstone race was a weird one, with accidents, rain and even more rain – so much, that it was red flagged prior to the full 4 hours had been completed. The team had hoped for more at the home circuit of Ginetta, but it wasn’t to be.
The team achieved their best ELMS result of the year, at the season finale at Autodromo do Algarve in Portimao. They secured third place, with quite good middle part of the race done by Mikkel, to move the car towards the front of the field.
He was back in a car on the very next day at the Rookie test, where he tested for R-ace GP, with Mikkel finishing on top of the LMP3 times – without ever having driven a Duqueine before.
Photo: JJ Media
He has signed a double deal with Rinaldi Racing for 2026, so Mikkel will race for the German outfit in both the European Le Mans Series and Michelin Le Mans Cup, with a Ligier JS P325, similar to the car that he competed with in Le Mans in 2025.
Rinaldi Racing has experience from both series, but with a brand new line-up in the ELMS, where it was the newspaper car for many years, in the shape of Wochenspiegel Team Monschau. They have opted to go back to Germany this year, so the new driver combo is Pedersen sharing the drive time with Alvise Rodella and Jose Cautela. Rodella raced in the Michelin Le Mans Cup for CLX Motorsport in 2025, while Cautela made his Michelin Le Mans Cup debut at the season finale in Portimao, racing for Inter Europol Competition, finishing in impressive fourth. If we go 20 years back in time, Cautela was at the speedy end of the Karting fields, but he hasn’t done much car racing then, hence his Bronze rating. So on paper, it’s a quite good combo, but that is not always enough to turn it into success, as history tells.
Mikkel Gaarde Pedersen will compete in the LMC alongside Steve Parrow in the LMP3 Pro/Am category. They worked so well together at Le Mans last year, so it was an easy choice to continue that collaboration – and hopefully finish one position better in the Championship for Parrow.
Graphics: European Le Mans Series
The 2026 season will be important for Mikkel Gaarde Pedersen, since it’s a fantastic opportunity to put his name on board in not one but two championships, on the same race weekends. That gives him a lot of miles, and even though it’s two different chassis’s, they both will be run by Rinaldi Racing.
The Michelin Le Mans Cup 2026 starts on 11 April, while the European Le Mans Series runs their first 4 hours race of the year, once day later. But the there will be test days for both series, in the day leading up to the race weekend.
