Brendon Hartley, Toro Rosso, Circuit of the Americas, 2018

Hartley says he’s proved he can beat Gasly

2018 United States Grand Prix

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Brendon Hartley says he has demonstrated he is capable of beating team mate Pierre Gasly in recent races though his results haven’t always shown it.

Red Bull motorsport director Helmut Marko previously told the media Hartley needs to “beat Gasly” in order to keep his seat at the team for the 2019 F1 season.

Hartley finished 11th in the United States Grand Prix and was promoted to ninth position, his best race finish to date.

Asked by RaceFans whether this was one of his best drives, Hartley said: “Yeah I think it was a good one. I feel like I’ve been performing well in the last events.

“Obviously every weekend I’m answering questions about my future or reading about it. I read in the press I need to beat my team mate.

“But in fact from Singapore I was ahead in the race before I had team orders and I was boxed again. I was ahead in Russia and the car broke. I was ahead in qualifying in Suzuka and I was ahead again today.

“So we’ll see what happens, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Hartley said his car wasn’t quick enough to finish higher than he did on-the-road. “Eleventh is a bit brutal when you drive a very good race.

“I honestly don’t think I could do much more today. I was far ahead of Pierre, everything was fine on both cars. We both suffered from pace again in the race.”

However Gasly said his race was compromised by the damage he incurred from debris on the first lap.

“There were carbon pieces everywhere,” said Gasly. “I had to go through it and damaged the car from the first lap.

“That really lost a lot of grip all through the race and was already difficult with the tyres but made our life much tougher. So we tried a two-stop but I could not make anything work, it was pretty difficult.”

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2018 F1 season

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27 comments on “Hartley says he’s proved he can beat Gasly”

  1. Circumstances.

  2. Brendon Hartley says he has demonstrated he is capable of beating team mate Pierre Gasly in recent races though his results haven’t always shown it.

    1. why doesn’t the bold work in quotation??

      his results haven’t always shown it.

  3. Just as Stroll has proven he belongs in F1…

  4. Fighting talk but the stats don’t lie, outscored 28 points to 4 so far and beaten in quali most of the time. Nice guy but he wouldn’t have a seat only for a severe lack of Red Bull Junior program options, I mean even Kvyat is back. What a poor line up that will be for Torro Rosso in 2019 if they keep Hartley. Must be pretty demotivating for staff to build a car for two drivers like that.

    1. Kvyat is a great driver whose career was going great before he got demoted to TR because of VER. I think he will drive well once back.

      1. He was demoted because his error prone behavior. He had a podium in china but all the other moments he was named “torpedo” for a reason.

        1. Yes, because Vettel needed to blame someone for getting into a crash twice in two weekends (and twice in that race, right?), though I am not so sure that a dispassionate review of his driving reveals he was really that error prone while in Red Bull, just inexperienced, and not used to the Marko pressure cooker like that.

          1. @bosyber do you really think Kvyat was demoted because Vettel needed someone to blame?
            more like, he got demoted because he was driving like a maniac for 3 races straight…

          2. @nickthegreek

            He was demoted because Max Verstappen was not being patient about his Red Bull seat. There is no way in hell Kvyat’s performances were poor enough to drop him, especially considering how strong a match he was for Daniel in 2015.

    2. “Fighting talk but the stats don’t lie, outscored 28 points to 4 so far and beaten in quali most of the time. ”

      Well let’s assume Gasly is the real deal in a similar vein to Leclerc, Hartley has a 24 point deficit, 12 of which came from 1 race in Bahrain. He certainly hasn’t been getting further away from Gasly as the season has went on, in fact he has got closer if anything.

      21 races together and Gasly leads 14-7 in Qualy, 14 7 in races as well. Hartley has had 9 retirements, Gasly only 4.

      Yes, there’s a gap there, Yes, Hartley is no superstar future champion, but if Gasly is meant to be, the numbers don’t show Hartley in too bad a light.

  5. He’s not a bad driver but on the whole he’s been slower than Gasly by a fair margin. I’d be surprised if he’s still there next year.

  6. By all intents and purposes he wasan excellent WEC driver. But in any sport you are only as good as your last race. Beating Gasly… And racing to P11 is not terribly impressive. Look at what Charles LeClerc is doing. In F1 you either set the world alite or you are no star.

  7. You prove you can beat your team-mate —— by beating your team-mate.

  8. Peppermint-Lemon (@)
    23rd October 2018, 18:12

    This guy absolutely deserves to be in F1.

    1. You are a kiwi?

      1. Hartley is more deserving than the wiiliams lads

    2. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
      24th October 2018, 15:07

      I agree

  9. Maybe they could tempt Sébastien Bourdais back?

  10. I don’t understand the hating on Hartley. He knows he was lucky to get the drive this year. He’s driven consistently, if a little conservatively at times, but that is what you need when you have a totally new engine package. He’s not claiming to be as good as Verstappen or Leclerc and it’s unfair to compare him to them – they’re both because it’s clear they’re on a higher level than most other drivers in the field. It is fair to compare Hartley to Gasly and that’s where Marko is measuring his performance. Hartley isn’t claiming to have outperformed Gasly across the season – it’s clear that Gasly has outqualified him and scored more points. Hartley is simply claiming that he’s performing as well, or better than Gasly in the past few races. That seems fair and that’s what Marko has asked.
    Is Hartley a future world champ? Probably not, and he’s not claiming to be. Will he be at Torro Rosso next year? Maybe not, but he’s doing a fine job in his first full season with few mistakes and some good performances. I commend him for his performance and approach and hope to see him on the grid again next year.

    1. sensible post

    2. I agree with not hating on Hartley for his performances, also because he seems a pleasant fellow (if anything, too nice for F1!).

      However, it must be recognized that Toro Rosso is a breeding ground for the big team, so its unofficial motto is “Perform or Perish”. Dr. Marko isn’t looking for consistent and conservative performances to bring the points in to TR, he wants to see a driver show that glimmer of talent that indicates he’s worthy of the big team. If a current driver doesn’t show it, and if Dr. Marko has another driver on the sidelines he’d like to evaluate, a swap will be made.

      Maybe his consistent driving performance might earn him a spot as a simulator or testing driver in the Red Bull family, or at another team. I wish him well.

  11. Yeah you can beat him… Only when his car is broken!

  12. “Obviously every weekend I’m answering questions about my future or reading about it. I read in the press I need to beat my team mate.

    No, actually you don’t need to beat your team mate, you need to keep your boss happy.

    Red Bull motorsport director Helmut Marko previously told the media Hartley needs to “beat Gasly” in order to keep his seat at the team for the 2019 F1 season.

    Ah ha! So beating Gasly might keep Marko happy, or rather not beating Gasly will just give Marko enough excuses to fire you. So what you need to do is study how Gasly drove at each race track he beat you, and then try to drive better than that. It’s called “re-inventing yourself”. In fact, since Verstappen and Vettel raced in this team you should be able to compare yourself to them, so why not study how they drove as well.
    Every professional driver has to re-invent themselves from time to time, otherwise they will find they need to see their boss about this problem, that problem, another problem. If, as I suggest, you do study how those who are now recognised as being in a class of their own, that should give you a guide as to the flaws in your own technique.
    All professional drivers are kept employed because their boss doesn’t have enough excuses to fire them. Even Lewis remains employed because Toto doesn’t have enough excuses to fire him. While I doubt that beating Gasly once will keep Marko happy, doing so a few times in the remaining races would definitely give him less excuses to fire you.

    1. Every professional driver has to re-invent themselves from time to time, otherwise they will find they need to see their boss about this problem, that problem, another problem. If, as I suggest, you do study how those who are now recognised as being in a class of their own, that should give you a guide as to the flaws in your own technique.
      All professional drivers are kept employed because their boss doesn’t have enough excuses to fire them.

      @drycrust – nicely said. You could remove the word “driver” and this would apply to most of us working professionals as well.

  13. No, sorry. Next bit of news will be Marko justifying why HAR had to go…

  14. I can’t say I agree with Hartley. He’s been slightly more competitive since Singapore, but still doesn’t look better than Gasly. He might retain that Toro Rosso seat just because of a lack of better options for Red bull. If they got Kvyat back in, it shows that there isn’t much talent in RB’s young driver program right now.

    To give credit where it’s due, Hartley hasn’t been all that bad this season. I still rate him higher than Stroll and (maybe) Sirotkin. I’d put him level with Vandoorne for the season.

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