Scott Dixon looked on with pride as countryman Brendon Hartley impressed on his Formula 1 debut with Scuderia Toro Rosso at Circuit of The Americas.
The New Zealander, a four-time Verizon IndyCar Series champion and winner of the 2008 Indy 500, has long served as an inspiration to younger Kiwis who’ve followed in his international footsteps. Whether it’s Hartley, Porsche LMP1 teammate and fellow Le Mans winner Earl Bamber, or Australian Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen, Dixon has maintained a watchful eye on their progress throughout the globe.
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After Hartley overcame grid penalties accrued by former STR drivers that relegated his entry to the last row, the 27-year old recovered from a slow start to make several on-track passes on his way to finishing 13th for Red Bull’s junior team.
“It was fantastic, and I think it surprised a lot of people,” Dixon told RACER. “Having known Brendon since he was a young boy, and looking at his junior career and all he achieved, he was pressured a lot from an early age where they had him doing three series at once. So it’s good to see he’s become a huge talent, and that he isn’t really fazed by pressure. It was a proud day for New Zealand.”
Hartley has been fortunate to drive for Porsche in its 919 Hybrid, which could be the most advanced and complex road racing car in the world. It made learning the intricacies of his STR12 chassis less of a nightmare, for sure, but familiarity with a cutting-edge Le Mans Prototype made for endurance competition was never going to translate directly to mastering his new F1 machine. Not in one weekend at COTA, according to Dixon.
“It’s always a tough situation,” he said. “You’ve always got people on both sides of the fences judging how you’re doing, so all you can do is see how he’s done against his teammate. He did well, and he’s been thrown in at the deep end with no testing, and he was up against guys who’ve got almost a full season of F1 racing behind them.
“It’s learning everything at once in the heat of battle; standing starts, pit stops, all of the electronics to stay on top of, tire degradation, and then trying to manage those things to perfection. It’s a tall task to come right in and not make a fool of yourself. It shows the depth that he has to keep it all under control and go out there and make forward progress in the race.”
Prior to Hartley’s last-minute call-up by STR, 33 years had passed since the grand prix grid featured a Kiwi. And prior to Mike Thackwell’s solo run for the tiny RAM team, F1 legends Chris Amon, Denny Hulme and Bruce McLaren were the standard bearers for Antipodean drivers.
Despite two F1 tests with the Williams-BMW team in 2004 (below), Dixon served as the closest New Zealand had come to F1 until Hartley was signed as a test driver for STR in 2008 and continued in that role with STR, Red Bull and Mercedes before turning his attention to sports car racing in 2014.
“It’s hard for smaller countries like ours where we don’t have big companies behind young drivers,” he said. “Hopefully, things like what’s happened with Brendon is the start of F1 getting back to hiring the best talent instead of relying on the biggest checkbooks.”
Based on what STR saw during three days in COTA, Hartley got the nod for this weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix over Daniil Kyvat. It’s a heady endorsement that, on the surface, could be interpreted as the team wanting to further evaluate Hartley for a seat in 2018.
Although he’s believed to have signed on as Dixon’s IndyCar teammate at Chip Ganassi Racing after Porsche announced its upcoming exit from the FIA WEC, it’s hard to say whether the Kiwi will stay on a trajectory toward America or receive a buyout offer from STR.
Wherever Hartley lands, he can count on continued support from Dixon.
“The biggest thing for me is I hope he gets a fair shake in F1,” he said. “He’s definitely on good terms, and in the good book of [Red Bull advisor] Helmut Marko, if there is such a thing, and I think it goes a long way, which is why he was called upon. They know how good he is, and all he’s done in the other categories since he was last with them has obviously seen him grow immensely. I just want Brendon to have a chance to show what he’s become.”
