From F1 prospect to zero… to Indy 500
INDYCAR SERIES
Indycar Series newcomer Ben Hanley will complete a remarkable career turnaround when he lines up on the grid for the St Petersburg opener in March.
The 33-year-old Mancunian (below) was confirmed as the driver for series rookie Dragonspeed before Christmas, and will take in a limited schedule of five races, comprising St Pete, Barber Motorsports Park, Road America, Mid-ohio and the Indianapolis 500. The Elton Julian-run team will use Chevrolet power in its part-programme, before embarking on a full-season effort in 2020.
Cast aside by the Renault Driver Development scheme after a tough start to the 2008 GP2 Series, Hanley became something of a forgotten talent. He impressed in the short-lived Superleague Formula before returning to race karts, where he became a factory driver for ART and won a European championship in 2015.
It was after his FIA driver rating was lowered to Silver that Hanley got his shot at career redemption with Dragonspeed in the 2016 European Le Mans Series. Such was the impression he made on ex-british F3 racer Julian that Hanley was kept on for ’17, despite being bumped back up to a
Gold rating, and then was chosen to lead the team’s graduation into LMP1 of the World Endurance Championship last year with its Bre-gibson (above).
Hanley admits it was an opportunity he never expected to present itself, but welcomes Julian’s vote of trust. “Over the past couple of years he’s worked with a number of drivers, so it’s great that he’s trusted me and believes that I can do the job required,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity for me – it’s always something that I’ve been interested in and wanted to try, so it’s mega to be a part of it.”
Although he has not raced a single-seater since 2010, Hanley has logged extensive test mileage in Gp2/formula 2 and GP3 machinery conducting tyre-development work, which should help Dragonspeed on its steep learning curve.
“I’ve done a lot of mileage in the background and the experience that you gain when you’re doing tyre testing and car development is massive,” he said. “That obviously plays a big role when teams take on a new venture, like this year with the LMP1 car. The more knowledge you have on the development side of things, the quicker you can identify problems and also help with some solutions.”
Hanley is in no doubt about the size of the challenge facing the driver and team, with neither having any prior experience of oval racing, but he is looking forward to the first open test at Austin next month to gauge how Dragonspeed will shape up against the competition.
“We know we’ve got a big battle to get on the pace – it’s not going to happen overnight but we’ve got to start somewhere, so there’s no better time than in pre-season testing,” he said. “It’s good that I can get familiarised with the car. We’re not just jumping straight in to the Indy 500 – the programme that Dragonspeed have picked is the best we can do with the partial season [competing in early-season races rather than making a series debut at Indy]. Straight away we’re at the pre-season test with all the other cars so we can compare against each other and identify the areas we need to improve.
“We all know each other and we all know each other’s roles, so when we get to that first test we’ll just focus on familiarising ourselves with the car as opposed to forging new relations on the engineering side, so it’s a big positive to have that continuation.”