1,000 Greatest Drivers: Nicki Thiim

The lesser-known prince of Denmark.

Yeah, I had to go for the stupid Hamlet joke this one time because there are currently only three Danish drivers who I consider locks for my 1,000 greatest drivers list. The greatest of these is obviously Jan Magnussen, but 1986 DTM champion Kurt Thiim and his son, 2013 Porsche Supercup and two-time WEC champion Nicki are the other two. I suppose there’s a possibility I could have three father-son pairs on the list, but Kevin Magnussen definitely still has some work to do while Christian Lundgaard could be a lock based on his IndyCar performances by the time I’ve done. However, even though Christian’s father Henrik won a European Rally Championship, I don’t think Henrik really belongs on the list since the World Rally Championship had far eclipsed the ERC by then. I suspect Magnussen and the two members of #TeamThiim will not be the only Danes I list (Casper Elgaard, Kasper Jensen, Mikkel Jensen, and Marco Sørensen all have strong cases also but Elgaard I need to do more research on and the latter three probably have more work to do, much like Lundgaard and Kevin Magnussen). I was surprised by how big Thiim’s social media presence was. His 25,000 YouTube subscribers might not seem like a lot, but I think he might actually rank in the top ten in that category in drivers I will include for this list. When you consider that entertaining clown princes/wannabe standup comedians like Jordan Taylor and David Malukas only have around 6,000 subscribers each (basically equivalent to me) and Tyler Reddick has a mere 2,000, that really gives you some idea of how well-known Thiim actually is. I’m pretty impressed for a driver who flies so far under the radar. And he was pretty much single-handedly responsible for giving the inventor of a programming language a Le Mans win and WEC title. I’ve respected Thiim for a long time, even though I couldn’t quite find room for him on any of my post-2020 top 200s.