Despite being one of Helmut Marko’s legion of spurned Formula 1 hopefuls, Brendon Hartley has certainly gone on to greener pastures in his career.
As the young gun in Porsche’s juggernaut LMP1 assault, the Kiwi has taken twelve race wins, the World Endurance Championship title in 2015 alongside Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard, won Le Mans earlier this year, and stands on the cusp of a second title this weekend in Fuji.
As a single seater driver, Hartley was no sensation. Early success in Formula Renault Eurocup and British F3 earned him the attention of Marko, and saw him rack-up test mileage for both Red Bull and Toro Rosso, however the junior results simply were not there to merit promotion from his reserve role. Two lacklustre seasons in Formula Renault 3.5 were enough for Marko, and he was duly released from the Red Bull Junior Team.
However as a sportscar driver, Hartley clearly found his feet. He perhaps hasn’t had the remarkable one-lap pace of Swiss stablemate Neel Jani, or the racecraft of the ultra-experienced Bernhard, but as a package Hartley has repeatedly proven himself a top-drawer professional racing driver.
Even in the darker moments; an error whilst leading in Silverstone last year causing Hartley to trip over a GTE Porsche and retire from the race, Brendon has showed the mental fortitude and professionalism to learn to from his mistakes. He is a calibre driver that any team ought to be interested in, and that is perhaps why, now that Porsche’s LMP1 squad is set to fold, Hartley is in talks with none other than Chip Ganassi’s powerhouse IndyCar squad.
But an F1 cameo in 2017 is another thing entirely. Follow Porsche driver and long-time LMP1 ace Andre Lotterer may have managed to make an impression when he outqualified team-mate Marcus Ericsson in his one-off appearance at the Belgian Grand Prix in 2014, but the circumstances are not even remotely comparable.
Firstly, with the back-marking Caterham Team, Lotterer was under no pressure to be competitive, whereas Hartley will be parachuted into the midst of a frenetic midfield battle on a circuit where a P6 for Sainz last year suggests Toro Rosso might potentially be competitive.
However more importantly, whilst Lotterer suggested that the G-loadings of the Caterham were actually less than those of his LMP1 car, Hartley is stepping into a car so physically intensive that even those used to the ferocity of a F1 car were apprehensive prior to the season. There is a very real prospect that his weekend in the car will be defined by the limits of his neck rather than his experience and skill in the car.
Hartley is by no means an ideal choice: Antonio Giovinazzi, Oliver Rowland or Sergey Sirotkin would have been much more compelling options. However this is only to be expected when Toro Rosso have found themselves in the crossfire of two paddock giants: on the one hand, Honda, keen to win a prestigious Super Formula title with Pierre Gasly, on the other, a Red Bull behemoth keen to ensure its continued supremacy over its junior squad as it moves towards an uncomfortably close relationship with the Japanese marque.
Certainly, the widespread paddock speculation about a long-term, phased withdrawal from F1 by an alienated Dietrich Mateschitz has not manifested in any doctrinal thawing on Toro Rosso’s driver line-ups. Twelve seasons spent supplying Red Bull with the brightest and best junior stars has worked only because Helmut Marko has ensured a steady supply of young hopefuls.
However now that supply has dried-up; now landmark talents like Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc are being poached by McLaren and Ferrari. In the absence of its usually reliable repository of fresh drivers, the situation has been further compounded by the loss of Sainz to Renault and the woeful form of Daniil Kvyat.
As his snub in favour of Gasly in recent races suggests, the Russian’s abysmal 2017 season would have normally have resulted in the sack, but such is Toro Rosso’s driver vacuum, it is very possible that the constraints on the team’s driver policy will result in an extension of Kvyat’s career.
Given the unprecedented circumstances; a driver poached as part of a wider power unit deal and an unusually dry larder of Red Bull juniors, the logical approach would be to relax the prevailing Toro Rosso driver policy and allow the team to consider more ‘conventional’ candidates. Paddock rumour in Japan suggested that Pascal Wehrlein ultimately would have been team principal Franz Tost’s preferred option.
However there is no suggestion of any form of logically-minded concessions. When asked about the possibility of a non-Red Bull driver taking up residence at Toro Rosso, Marko told Autosport “We are Red Bull, we are different,” he said. “It’s difficult to imagine.”
Indeed, for most midfield teams with an unconfirmed driver line-up for the following season, a free race seat for a weekend would be a blessing in disguise; an invaluable opportunity to evaluate a possible candidate for a full-time race seat. And yet, as Marko suggests, Red Bull is different.
With Hartley, they are at best giving the 27-year-old the weekend of a lifetime, and at worst are wasting an opportunity when they could be evaluating Kvyat’s successor. That said, a miraculous performance from the Kiwi next weekend, however unlikely, would almost certainly make him a contender for the seat in 2018.
For Toro Rosso, Hartley’s cameo ultimately matters little: it is just one car on one weekend, and as an intriguing plotline may attract more attention than the team usually enjoys. However, what does matter is the fact that the team is being expected to further the essential development of an infamously troublesome power unit in 2018 with the underwhelming choice of the toiling Kvyat or a miscellaneous blast from Red Bull’s past, like Hartley or Buemi. Against the magnitude of talent in the midfield at the moment, Red Bull’s driver doctrine is directly undermining the competitiveness of its junior squad in 2018.
Some may facetiously suggest that Red Bull has never been truly interested in the competitiveness of Toro Rosso, and that ever since the technical links between the teams were cut following the embarrassment of the junior squad’s win in Monza in 2008, the Faenza-based outfit has become little more than a driver pool for Red Bull’s convenience.
And yet, if rumours of the end of the Renault contract are to be believed, Red Bull is more invested in the competitiveness of Toro Rosso than ever before, to ensure the improvement of the Honda power unit. In isolation, Hartley’s weekend may be a very interesting study of the specific demands of F1 on otherwise very capable professional racing driver, but it is nonetheless symptomatic of how Red Bull is stifling its junior outfit.
