Buemi and Hartley on De Vries' arrival in WEC: 'Well prepared'

From next season, Nyck de Vries will drive for Toyota in the WEC championship. Brendon Hartley and Sébastien Buemi both drive for Toyota and have driven for Toro Rosso in the past. At the press conference in Baku, they expressed hope for the Dutchman.

Buemi says De Vries knows quite a bit about endurance racing. After all, he was the reserve and test driver for the team from 2020 to 2022, and he has experience in LMP2. Still, driving an entire race is different. "But it's clear that once you go into that race weekend and you have to share the cars with the other two guys and you just get an hour of free practice for you to prepare, it's not easy. The way the whole weekend develops is basically different. I guess he will need a bit of time to adapt, but he's got good teammates that will help him, and the team has been in the championship for a long time. I think he's well prepared and there shouldn't be any big issues. But we need to keep in mind it's endurance racing, it's long races, you need to make it to the end."

Hartley agrees. "He's well prepared. I think we've got a great group of teammates across both cars and a team that has a huge amount of knowledge to help him get up to speed quickly. He started testing already and I'm sure he's going to be up to speed. I hope we're going to be fighting for the championship next year, but I'm sure there's going to be a big battle with the two cars." Interestingly, Hartley was in a similar situation to De Vries, in which he drove at Toro Rosso.

Foot broken

Hartley was incidentally present via Zoom, as he was at home in Monaco. He appeared to have broken his foot. He hopes to be fit for testing in February. He was due to race the 24 Hours of Daytona in IMSA in January, but that does not seem to be on the cards for him.