Brendon
Hartley

Brendon Hartley was born on 10 November 1989 in Palmerston North, New Zealand. His father, Brian, had raced in several categories, including Formula Atlantic. Hartley started karting at the age of six, following in the footsteps of his brother Nelson. In 2003 he won the New Zealand Formula Ford Festival, and he later moved to Europe to race in Formula Renault 2.0. In 2008 he finished third in the British Formula 3 Championship with Carlin, winning five races, and also took third place at the Macau Grand Prix that year.

As a member of the Red Bull junior programme, Hartley was named reserve driver for both Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso in 2009. Red Bull ended its support in 2010, when he had yet to win a race in Formula Renault 3.5. He went on to make occasional GP2 appearances, debuting for Coloni at Monza in 2010 and scoring a point in the season finale in Abu Dhabi.

From 2012 he turned to sportscar racing, first in the LMP2 class with Murphy Prototypes. In 2014 he became a works driver for Porsche, driving the 919 Hybrid in the World Endurance Championship. In 2015 he won the drivers' title with Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard. In 2017 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Bernhard and Earl Bamber, and took a second world championship title.

Hartley made his Formula One debut for Toro Rosso at the 2017 United States Grand Prix. He replaced Pierre Gasly, who was contesting the Super Formula finale, and started 19th after an engine penalty. He finished 13th. He then took over from Daniil Kvyat for the rest of the season, and after four starts he was 23rd in the championship. In 2018 he was a full-time driver alongside Gasly and finished 19th overall across 21 races. He scored points with tenth places in Azerbaijan and Germany and a ninth place in the United States, his best result. Toro Rosso did not keep him for 2019, and Alexander Albon took his place.

After Formula One, Hartley raced in Formula E for Dragon Racing in 2019-20 and left the team in July 2020. In the WEC he joined Toyota in 2019. With Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima he won the 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans, and in 2022 he took another Le Mans victory with Buemi and Ryō Hirakawa. He also won world championship titles with Toyota in 2022 and 2023.

Source: Wikipedia, “Brendon Hartley”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.