How Hartley’s ‘Kiwi Grit’ led to second F1 chance

Twelve months ago, Brendon Hartley seemed to have everything all laid out. The 28-year-old was preparing to fight with Porsche for a maiden overall victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and a second FIA World Endurance Championship crown, while also fitting in some additional sports car commitments where possible.

While he achieved these goals, the course that led him to be in Barcelona for Formula 1 winter testing one year later, gearing up for his first full season of grand prix racing, acts as one of the more remarkable motorsport stories in recent times.

"Becoming a Formula 1 driver was definitely not on the agenda this time last year,” Hartley tells Crash.net. “It has been crazy. It all happened so quickly.”

Hartley had been a mainstay at Porsche throughout the existence of its LMP1 programme which proudly returned to Le Mans and the WEC in 2014. After being dropped from Red Bull’s junior programme at the end of 2010, Hartley ultimately made the switch to sports car racing two years later, starting out in the European Le Mans Series and IMSA before getting the call from Porsche.

From there, Hartley developed into one of the stars of the WEC. 2014 was a bedding-in year for Porsche, with victory following at Le Mans one year later in the third car featuring Nico Hulkenberg. Hartley took the WEC drivers’ title that season alongside Timo Bernhard and Mark Webber, but had a tougher 2016 as the sister Porsche crew stepped up, winning both Le Mans and the title.

And so began 2017. Early appearances in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring were followed by what was meant to be a regular WEC campaign - yet it would turn into the most successful and unpredictable year of Hartley’s career.

Talk of a Porsche exit from LMP1 first emerged at Le Mans, dominating the news for much of the week leading up to the race. The German manufacturer stole the headlines in the race itself as Hartley, Bernhard and Earl Bamber - a childhood friend of Hartley’s - fought back after more than an hour in the pits to take victory, capitalising on the LMP1 meltdown that left Toyota licking its wounds.

The decision to quit LMP1 was finally taken in July by Porsche as it turned attention to Formula E, a more cost-effective way of racing that preached a cleaner image - something all the more crucial in the wake of the Dieselgate scandal.

Hartley immediately put in a call to Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko, letting him know that if an opportunity were ever to arise in F1, he would be interested. Little more was said then, but the seed was sown for his shock debut three months later at the United States Grand Prix.

Hartley’s push to find a seat post-Porsche led him to consider a variety of options, including IMSA and Formula E. The most serious one was IndyCar, though. After Chip Ganassi Racing failed to land its first-choice driver to partner Scott Dixon, Hartley came into contention for form an all-Kiwi line-up. A deal is understood to have been signed, but all parties have remained tight-lipped about the episode. The seat eventually went to IndyCar sophomore Ed Jones.

A SECOND CHANCE

The Red Bull programme is notorious for its cut-throat nature, ending the F1 careers of drivers such as Sebastien Buemi, Jean-Eric Vergne and, by the looks of things, Daniil Kvyat. So the idea of a cast-off returning to the fold after eight years seemed fanciful - but Hartley made it work.


“People ask me if two, three years ago I thought there was ever a chance of going back to Formula 1. The answer is no, but at the same time I knew that I was a better driver than I had ever been,” Hartley says.

“I knew that I was more well-rounded. I knew that if the opportunity was there, I would grab it. I didn’t know if another opportunity would come, but it did. I did everything I could to make that happen and make the most of the situation.

“I didn’t see it coming. But when I saw there was a small chance, I did everything I could to make it happen.”

There was a good deal of luck in Hartley’s arrival. Had Toro Rosso stuck to its original plan of fielding Pierre Gasly and Daniil Kvyat until the end of the season following Carlos Sainz Jr.’s early move to Renault, Hartley may not have got his opportunity. Alas, Gasly’s Super Formula duties with Honda - who Red Bull was working hard to schmooze at the time - took priority, leaving Toro Rosso a driver short for Austin.

Enter Hartley.

A solid showing on debut was enough to secure Hartley a recall for the remainder of the season alongside Gasly as Kvyat was booted out of the Red Bull fold for good. It made for a hectic schedule for Hartley, who had eight straight weekends of racing across three different series - and even a Formula E test for good measure.

Toro Rosso was left limping to the end of the year as Renault’s reliability crippled the team’s on-track displays, but it put the building blocks in place for a very different-looking 2018: powered by Honda with Gasly and Hartley in the car.

“Initially it was surreal,” Hartley remembers. “I was just taking each day as it came. I wasn’t thinking too far ahead, trying to enjoy it, trying to take everything in and learn as much as possible.

“Then finally when it was announced that I would be a full-time driver, I enjoyed that moment - but it’s funny, that moment passes pretty quickly. All of a sudden, you start focusing on ‘how do I do the best job that I can?’

“Of course being a Formula 1 driver, there’s pressure and there’s expectation. There’s all those things. All of a sudden you’ve reached one dream of being a Formula 1 driver, but then you quickly forget about that. You move onto the next goal.”

KIWI GRIT

The four-race run at the end of 2017 was really a prologue to Hartley’s F1 career, which properly got underway with the start of pre-season testing in Barcelona last week. Toro Rosso enjoyed a trouble-free test with Honda, completing more laps than any other team. While Hartley lost a lot of his planned running to the weather, the first impressions were very good.

Hartley is refusing to get ahead of himself. Instead he is striving to tick off the goals every F1 driver sets when they are starting out. “The first point, the first podium - I guess your goal and target keeps moving,” he says. “I try not to plan too far ahead. I think that’s the only way you can stay sane, especially for me as an athlete. You can’t plan so far ahead. It has to be pretty fluid.

“I’m still taking the same approach this year, taking it one race at a time, doing the best that I can and soaking everything in. But just not getting ahead of myself. I have big ambitions, but I don’t want to look too far ahead.”

But much as Hartley’s F1 career seemed to have been written off in the past, the new Toro Rosso-Honda partnership faced a similar reaction when it was first announced. Honda had become the running joke of the F1 paddock given its struggles with McLaren over the last three years, only for the opening test to see it answer a number of critics in impressive fashion.

“I’m really optimistic and positive about this new relationship with Toro Rosso and Honda,” says Hartley. “Everyone’s working really hard. I see that we’re going to improve during the season.

“I hope that we can be a bit of a surprise. I think a lot of people wrote us off with the new partnership with Honda. I really believe we can surprise a few people. I know myself the people in this team and how hard Honda are working as well. I’m really looking forward to the season.”

Hartley’s F1 career was never supposed to happen this way - but his unrelenting, unwavering push to seize the opportunity gave him the chance to get in the saddle for Toro Rosso. It’s an approach and stance that served him well in sports cars, and bodes well for the next, unexpected chapter of his racing career.

“I have some personal goals and targets that I want to fulfil, and I think only I’ll know if I’ve achieved them,” he says. “At the end of the day as a driver, if you’re smart enough, you know if you’ve done a good job or a bad job and where you can improve.

“I want to keep improving during the season. I want to be mentally strong, show some aggression, not make too many mistakes and capitalise where I can.”

Mark Webber may have made ‘Aussie Grit’ his moniker through his racing career, but Hartley has shown such determination is an antipodean trait. Given how he capitalised on the unexpected turn of events in the summer months of 2017, you would not bet against the Kiwi on making the most of even the smallest opportunity that comes his way during his debut F1 season.