‘How I’ll Remember It’ is a great read from Brendon Hartley released this week on The Players’ Tribune website. In it, Hartley reflects on his first full season of Formula One in 2018 and what it was like to end that dream.
It’s a unique insight into the mind of an ex-F1 driver. Hartley opens up on almost losing his seat mid-season, driving under extreme pressure and the eventual end in Abu Dhabi. It”s the type of piece that you want to read several times over.
At just 15-years-old, Hartley won the first every Toyota Racing Series race back at the beginning in January 2005. The opening round was held at the Timaru International Circuit as part of the summer series when it was at its height. That was the time when there were 30 NZV8s competing, the Porsche GT3 and Formula 1600 classes had big fields and at every meeting there was lots of families attending with kids collecting posters from driver signing sessions and parents buying plenty of merchandise. There was Ford vs Holden, Baird vs Halliday and the new addition of the Toyota Racing Series.
I remember it was a slightly chaotic weekend. We were running the Karcher Racing Team with both Matthew and Fiona Hamilton competing in the TRS. New team, new car, new series and new sponsors! I don’t remember much about that first race other than it was wet and there were problems with the start with the cars being held for too long with screaming engines that were trying to overheat. Hartley won the race which is now cemented in history. Little did we know that 14 years later he would be debuting in his first Formula One race with Scuderia Toro Rosso.
Hartley was quick all series but finished fourth overall. He seemed to crash a lot that year. It was Timaru’s Brent Collins who won the first title and a brand new Toyota Celica car – not a bad prize for a single seater series. Collins appeared to race by the ‘seat-of-his-pants’, rather than getting to technical and this was his advantage over the five rounds held between January and April.
At the end of the series Hartley headed to Europe competing in single seater categories starting with Formula Renault 2.0.
If you haven’t read it then check out ‘How I’ll Remember It’ .
2005 Toyota Racing Series – Overall points
1 Brent Collins 942
2 Andy Knight 904
3 Daniel Gaunt 874
4 Brendon Hartley 861
5 Chris Pither 782
6 Matthew Hamilton 755
7 Ben Harford 748
8 James Cressey 601
9 Wade Cunningham 589
10 Ben Crighton 563
11 Ken Smith 493
12 Tim Edgell 475
13 Kim Crocker 468
14 Fiona Hamilton 398
15 Duane Spurdle 367
16 Mark Munro 221
17 Andrew Higgins 220
18 Walter Grubmuller 200
Comments