Brendon Hartley: The Driver Every Team Trusts
Brendon Hartley (photo used under licence and © FIA Formula E)
Sometimes we see motorsport affording double World Champions an elevated status when they enter a new formula, based on their achievements up to that point. Fernando Alonso, for example, is unlikely to ever enter any form of racing without some form of factory backing, and, if you call his 2019 Indy 500 experience an anomaly, most of the time you'd expect the Spaniard to be in a car capable of winning.
The 2015 and 2017 World Endurance Champion. Brendon Hartley, on the other hand, has entered Formula E with one of the category's smallest teams, seemingly intent on showing his mettle in whatever machine is put at his disposal. How he performs in the coming races, after a difficult start in Diriyah, will give observers an idea of how hard electric street racing is for even the most able of debutants.
A building year
GEOX Dragon Racing is a team rebuilding after a 2018-19 season that was an immense challenge on and off the track, for reasons partly of their own making. The team began the season with Jose Maria Lopez, himself a former World Champion, three times over, in the World Touring Car Championship, and Maximilian Günther, rated on his entry into Formula E as one of the very hottest of properties. Günther had to sit out three races for Brazilian driver Felipe Nasr, a situation which confused many, while Lopez cut an increasingly downcast figure as the season rolled on. Günther improved as he built up his experience, but both he and Lopez left the team at the end of that season.
Dragon will be hoping for an improved Season 6 (photo used under licence and © FIA Formula E)
Dragon had finished Season 5 second-bottom of the Teams' Championship, and was in a sport that was due to become even more competitive in Season 6, due to new blue-chip manufacturers joining and bringing their own gargantuan budgets. The team, owned and run by Jay Penske, son of US motorsport living legend Roger and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, knew they would need to recruit and work smartly to beat the likes of Porsche and Mercedes.
It looked like it was a good start to this aim that they were able to take on Hartley, along with Nico Müller. While Hartley had experience driving the Porsche Formula E test car, Müller had been given running in the Audi alongside racing for the marque in the DTM, in which he finished runner-up in 2019. As they were to find in a troubled season-opening weekend in Saudi Arabia, testing is quite different to racing, and the Diriyah street circuit presents a set of variables that make it a fiendishly difficult place for drivers to learn their craft.
"I don't think it's fair to say it's difficult, but it is very, very different," Hartley said. "I think LMP1 to Formula One was much closer than either of them to Formula E. Obviously that it's electric is one side of it. The electric engine you get used to - you get a throttle which responds to your demands, and you get a certain amount of power to the rear axle - that's quite easy to understand. The difference is that it's quite heavy, you have a tyre that works in a big range of temperatures, so there's a lot of movement from the tyre, very low downforce which makes great racing, and a car that's set up to drive tight, very bumpy, street circuits."
The problem with Diriyah
Diriyah's problem is that it is not raced-on except for during the Formula E meeting, and, understandably for a track situated in a desert country, there is a huge amount of sand and dust on the track to hamper any driver who gets a few inches off-line. As Hartley explained, the Formula E car is a powerful beast to handle at the best of times, and with full power at Diriyah, the difficulty is multiplied.
"That's a big thing - the circuits are very different. They're more extreme than we've seen in other categories, and the car's made for them. The car's extremely challenging to get the most out of, I think all the drivers will tell you you're fighting... you have more power than grip, that's especially clear when you go 250," Hartley said, referring to the kw/h allowance in free practice and qualifying.
"The challenge on the weekend is you go to different power levels. I think adjusting to such a dynamic race day is a big challenge, and that's why we see the experienced guys top at the end of the season, because there's a lot of variables and it's tough." We saw exactly how tough it could get for even proven talents such as Hartley and Müller, when they both had issues throughout the weekend.
Hartley hit the wall in the first free practice session, meaning he missed the second. Qualifying, then, was about getting a safety-first banker lap in. 18th on the grid was followed by 19th in the race. The following day went better, with the New Zealander, in spite of having to start 19th, clawing his way up to two points for ninth in the second race.
Qualifying with extremely limited running in practice would not have been an ideal situation for any driver, and the Dragon driver's explanation of the thinking that goes into timed running illustrates how difficult it must have been. "There's a level of risk and reward. In F1 we do many laps, even in Q1 you sometimes do three or four laps, so you refine everything. Here, I think there's a bit of feeling how it is, maybe you don't want to take too much risk in places, so it pays off later on, don't want to lock the fronts and end up in the wall, there's a little bit of that here. You just get one shot at it."
Qualifying in Diriyah was a challenge for Hartley and Müller (photo used under licence and © FIA Formula E)
Friendly through setbacks or success
Most people know that Hartley raced one full season of Formula One, with Scuderia Toro Rosso, and that the season did not go how he, or his army of fans, would have wanted. He was hampered, it would emerge over the course of the season, by at-best equivocal support from Dr. Helmut Marko, a key decision-maker in the Red Bull motorsport programme. An article written by Hartley for The Player's Tribune, a publication running content written by athletes, gave a rare inside track on what it was like to be an F1 driver under the mental strain of knowing they would shortly lose their seat, while having to go out there and perform at the limit.
Hartley, while possessing enough toughness to take any sporting setback on the chin, isn't the sort of driver to burn bridges with former employers - one of the reasons he is so liked and trusted by former teams. He carries the Red Bull logo on the side of his race helmet, still receiving, it would appear, some backing from the drinks giant, having come up through its junior programme. Equally, the former Porsche LMP1 endurance driver has kept a good rapport with the management of the Porsche Formula E team, even though they opted for André Lotterer over Hartley for the race seat.
"I still have a great relationship with them," he said, "and I have to say thanks to them for allowing me to take on this opportunity. In theory I was still under contract and they allowed me to take an opportunity to race." Did this theoretical contract prior to his signing for Dragon mean he was still signed with Porsche? "Technically no, I have no commitments with them."
The answer left some leeway; Hartley clearly had a burning desire to race in Formula E as quickly as possible, and this motivated him to push for the Dragon seat, but there remains the possibility that he may be in the running for a Porsche drive in the future. Lotterer performed brilliantly in Diriyah, but he is 38 in a sport whose average age seems to be getting lower by the season, and the Belgian-German has expressed an interest in potentially trying Extreme E, the off-road racing formula coming in 2021.
Hartley’s technical input is acknowledged as among the best (photo used under licence and © FIA Formula E)
Simulator sensibilities
As another expression of how valued his input is by major manufacturers, Hartley, who will miss one Formula E race, at Sanya, due to his full-season involvement with Toyota's WEC team, which heads to Sebring at that time, will dovetail his Dragon and Toyota drives with occasional work in Ferrari's Formula One simulator (Müller will also miss a Formula E race, the New York E-Prix, due to DTM commitments).
While simulators are closer and closer to the experience of being on track with each passing year, Hartley was still able to point out some differences, when asked if it could match up to real-life driving. "No question it's more enjoyable being in a real car. It's totally immersive being in a simulator," but, he continued, there are inevitable differences.
"You try to give an impression of speed, of movements, in a simulator. The movements are small to try and give you a sense of balance. A lot of the time it's about setting up systems, in Formula One it's about developing the car." It's another aspect of why Hartley is highly rated by those who have run him: his technical feedback is known to be excellent.
Simulator work isn't, according to Hartley, primarily a tool for drivers to hone their own skills. "In some respects, particularly in Formula One, it's more about the team than the driver." There is another aspect: in his opinion, simulator work doesn't currently match the excitement of being on track. "With respect to adrenaline, in the simulator I have almost none, so of course the mental status is different."
It will be fascinating to see how Hartley, following a steep learning curve in Diriyah, fares on-track in the coming Formula E races, in a championship where adrenaline always flows.
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