How much longer will Brendon Hartley remain at Scuderia Toro Rosso in the 2018 Formula 1 season? Is it only a matter of time until he is replaced?
Brendon Hartley, 28, entered the 2018 Formula 1 season driving for Scuderia Toro Rosso having driven for the team in four races at the end of last season. He ended up giving up a ride with Chip Ganassi Racing in IndyCar this season to drive full-time for the team in Formula 1 this season.
However, there have been rumors of Toro Rosso potentially looking to replace Hartley, and those rumors really picked up after it was revealed that the team had attempted to get McLaren reserve driver Lando Norris to replace him. However, McLaren blocked the move so that the 18-year-old could not do so.
But while McLaren blocked this move, it certainly doesn’t mean, at least not definitively, that Toro Rosso are not still looking and perhaps even hoping to replace Hartley in the near future before the 2018 season comes to a close.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Hartley has struggled in his first season as a full-time Formula 1 driver. In four races last season, his top finish was only a 13th place finish, so struggles may have been expected for him this year, but he was forced to retire in two of those four races with mechanical issues, so there was only a small sample size of Formula 1 races by which to assess him heading into this season. He was a bit of an unknown.
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Through six races so far this season, Hartley has finished just one race in the top 10, thus meaning he has only scored points in one race. That one top 10 finish was only a 10th place result in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, so he only scored one point in that race. His one point places him in 18th in the championship standings out of 20 drivers. His average finish of 15.50 also ranks 18th among the 20 full-time drivers.
Perhaps the most convincing statistic that shows that Hartley has underperformed so far this year is the fact that his teammate, Pierre Gasly, has had a far more successful season than he has.
While Hartley sits in 18th place in the championship standings with just one point, Gasly, who only drove in five races for the team toward the end of last season, is all the way up in 11th with 18 points. He has two top 10 finishes, as he finished in fourth in the Bahrain Grand Prix and seventh in the Monaco Grand Prix. He scored 12 points and six points in those two races, respectively.
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With all of this in mind, could the end be near for Brendon Hartley at Toro Rosso? If the team can find a viable replacement candidate for him, then there is no reason to believe that they will not sign that driver if they are able to do so and the move is not blocked. Will he end up being replaced before the 2018 Formula 1 season comes to a close? If so, when will this replacement happen and who will his replacement be?