My Le Mans hat-trick: Brendon Hartley joins the sports car greats

New Zealander Brendon Hartley won Le Mans for the third time this summer, an impressive feat in itself, but he took almost as much joy in setting pole position ahead of his esteemed Toyota team-mate Kamui Kobayashi, an acknowledged expert when it comes to fastest laps at La Sarthe. While quick to praise the abilities of Toyota’s main man, he beams at the memory of that day.

“Well, both the win and the pole felt pretty good but Kamui is a master of putting one lap together at Le Mans. Last year he just pipped me and this year there wasn’t much between us. Getting pole is one of the nicer moments of the week at Le Mans, being given the responsibility to go out and tackle qualifying, having the privilege of low fuel, new tyres and the most fun out there to get my first pole. And yet, you know, you have the most pressure, you feel your heart beating before you go out, but yeah it was pretty special to take the pole off Kamui.”

Hartley’s pole came from a mighty lap, the kind that every driver strives for.

He can’t help smiling as he describes the build-up to what is now a much-hyped Hyperpole moment.

“My first run, I was keen to put in a good banker, and it was, but on the second run I dropped to P3, so I had just one lap left, just one opportunity, no track limits, minimal fuel and we knew the car could do it. It was a good lap, no mistakes, and crossing the line was a great feeling. It’s amazing how out of breath you are on a lap like that. Your heart is racing, the adrenalin is high, whereas in the race itself you’re calmer, you settle into a rhythm. It’s a totally different experience.”

The two Toyotas, No7 and 8, were given freedom to compete with each other despite the risks and for more than half the race they entertained the crowd with some out-and-out driving. In No8 Hartley, while aware of the risks, enjoyed a superb fight.

“It was touch and go between the two cars in the race. We swapped positions so many times, not much separating us, so we had to race incredibly hard. The team did a great job on the pitwall, managing the race behind the scenes, allowing us to battle. With 10 hours to go car 7 had a technical issue, which lost them two or three minutes and that gave us a big gap and we backed right off. We took the risk out of it. Until then we were flat-out, balls to the wall, taking as much risk as you dare to take in traffic and over the kerbs. Both cars wanted to win, so we were all pushing hard. It was completely open, a really close fight until they had a problem. Running nose-to-tail, that had been high stress for everyone, for about 14 hours – so full credit to the team for trusting us drivers to race so hard over such a long distance.”

Before building a reputation as a fast and reliable endurance racer Hartley impressed in single-seaters and made it all the way to Formula 1 with Toro Rosso. But it was the wrong car at the right time. F1, we know, can be a selfish sport, egos to the fore, but first with Porsche, and now Toyota, he has learnt to keep his ego firmly under control.

“Single-seaters you can be selfish, but sharing a car can be humbling”

“Le Mans is always a compromise. There’s a certain level of ego, to be the fastest, but you need to put that to the back of your mind, working with two other drivers. It’s something I enjoy about endurance racing. Single-seaters you can be a bit selfish, take the glory, but sharing a car can be quite humbling in some ways. If you’re having a bad day, you have to accept that on that day your team-mates may be quicker then you and you have to support each other, leave the ego behind, think of the team as a whole, and I like that. A really important part of Le Mans is getting the whole crew, the whole team, performing at its best. You can’t have one driver thinking of himself all the time. Things like seat position, set-up, sharing information, they’re all important and involve some compromise.”

Porsche has always been the benchmark when it comes to glory at La Sarthe but more recently, in its absence, Toyota has taken full advantage and shown that it, too, knows how to create the engineering and teamwork vital to victory in such a demanding race. Hartley has seen both sides of this story.

“Both teams are based in Germany, of course, but Toyota is half-Japanese so yeah, there’s a real mix of cultures there, but that’s normal in motor racing.

“Comparing to my time at Porsche there are a lot of similarities – those things you need to do to win Le Mans, how the team is run – but there are different driver dynamics, working with Timo [Bernhard] and Mark [Webber] and my old friend Earl Bamber at Porsche, and then all different drivers at Toyota – so I guess those are the biggest differences. At Toyota we all get on really well together, the six of us. We eat together. You will always see all six of us from the two cars together and that’s nice – the atmosphere is good. Sure, we want to beat each other on track, but good relationships behind the scenes help towards the success of the team overall. First, of course, you need a great car, and Toyota has built a great car.”

Precious few Kiwis have mastered Le Mans, Hartley joining an elite group of drivers from his home country. Like most racers he likes a few statistics and he’s quietly proud to have his name alongside some of the greats.

“It hasn’t really sunk in actually. I mean, I know it’s quite a small club of drivers who have won more than twice, so I am lucky and privileged to have won three times, especially as I think the only other New Zealanders to win are Bruce McLaren, Chris Amon and Earl Bamber. The last time a Kiwi was on pole was in 1967 and you know what… Bruce McLaren’s lap time that year was really quite similar because they didn’t have the chicanes on the straights back then. The Mulsanne was flat all the way and the new corners, the chicanes, have made it a different circuit.”

Outwardly at least Hartley is not an emotional chap. He’s a man with both feet firmly planted on the ground. Come the hype of the Hyperpole celebrations, however, he was on the verge of happy tears, surprised at just how much that one lap had meant to him.

“I don’t dwell on what it means, how you’d let everyone down if you crashed”

“It was emotional because the build-up is so long and I’m not sure how healthy it is for a driver, you know, the pressure. Going for pole you put yourself under huge pressure. Your heart is beating out of your chest. You’re aware of the whole team watching – there’s a lot of stress. So the feeling afterwards, when you’ve put the car on pole… it’s amazing. There was emotion, but much more came out after winning the race itself. I try not to think about it too much during the week. That’s my coping mechanism. You know how much work has already gone into the race for the previous 12 months. So I try not to dwell on what it means to everyone, how you’d let everyone down if you crashed, so I lock all that away. When I crossed the line at the finish all the emotion came out, what it meant to the team, all of that. I had tears in my eyes. My engineer told me my wife and daughter were so happy, so yeah, my emotions caught me a bit by surprise this year.”

Le Mans, for a driver, is hardly family time. Not only does he have the stress of beating the race itself, he also has to beat all the other cars. This summer, however, Hartley’s nearest and dearest were there to see their man win.

“I felt calm this year, calmer than others. Having my family there gave me 10 minutes to relax, to have proper escape from the stress. You’re living and breathing the race, non-stop, so those moments with the family, they give you some reality, some relief. People talk about how me being a new dad might slow me down, but nothing has changed for me and it definitely hasn’t slowed me down. Not at all.”

Brendon Hartley’s rise to the top

2007 Wins Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 Championship
2008 Becomes Toro Rosso test driver. Dropped in 2010
2012 Turns to endurance racing with Murphy Prototypes in LMP2
2014 Joins Porsche to drive the new 919 Hybrid in WEC
2015 Wins first WEC title with Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard in the Porsche 919
2017 Wins second WEC title as well as his first Le Mans 24 Hours with the 919
2017 Makes F1 debut at the 2017 US Grand Prix. Replaces Daniil Kvyat for the remainder of 2017 and 2018
2018 Ends F1 season in 19th, 25 points behind teammate Pierre Gasly. Replaced by Alex Albon for 2019.
2019 Joins Toyota for WEC season replacing Fernando Alonso. Second in the points
2020 Wins Le Mans with Toyota, his second victory
2022 Wins third Le Mans with Toyota. Currently sits second in the WEC standings