BMW Motorsport has announced their test and reserve driver for their upcoming FIA World Endurance Championship programme in the upcoming season.
That title has gone to the Danish driver Mikkel Jensen.
The 23 year-old Jensen is already a junior driver for BMW, and has been driver for the German brand for the last 12 month, racing in VLN and Blancpain. But he had a few weeks “off” to join the European Le Mans Series, where he drove for AT Racing in the LMP3 category. He has been allowed to do so again in 2018, where he will share the car with Alexander Talkanitsa Sr and Jr in the LMP3 category.
Mikkel Jensen will be testing this coming week at Aragon in Spain with the new BMW M8 GTE, alongside Philipp Eng, Augusto Farfus and Martin Tomczyk. That will be the first laps in the car for Jensen, which will be very important for the young Dane.
Photo: BMW Motorsport
The reason why it’s important, is due to the FIA World Endurance Championship opening round at Spa Francorchamps clashes with the opening round in DTM, resulting in neither Augusto Farfus nor Philipp Eng being able to race in that FIA WEC round. But Alexander Sims will be driving in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on the same weekend, racing for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team, in their BMW M8 GTE.
So only Antonio Felix da Costa will remain in car #82, making it very likely for Jensen to get his FIA WEC debut for the team.
The same thing will happen at the Fuji track in October, where DTM and IMSA once again race on the same weekends as the FIA WEC.
BMW hasn’t confirmed if Jensen will be in the car for those two races, but we have to assume that, following the news today. Otherwise BMW are down to only 3 of their 6 regular full season FIA WEC drivers at Spa and Fuji.
The FIA World Endurance Championship season starts on 5 May at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium.
