KEY POINTS:
Young Palmerston North 19-year-old Brendon Hartley gets his chance at the biggest prize in Formula One when he officially tests for the Red Bull Racing team at Jerez, Spain, December 15-17.
It's been a long time between drinks, but New Zealand finally has another young driver officially in the ranks of Formula One.
Not since Scott Dixon tested a Williams F1 car in 2005 and Mike Thackwell raced in Canada back in 1984, has a Kiwi been called up to show his stuff in the hot seat of an F1 car.
"I can't wait actually, it's going to be a pretty special moment for me and I've been working towards this for my whole life," said Hartley from Spain. "It's pretty special and hard to put into words."
Early this year Hartley took part in an unofficial shakedown test of the new Ferrari-engined Toro Rosso F1 car in Italy as well as having a play in a Renault-engined Red Bull car at Silverstone before it was packed off to the Japanese Grand Prix as a replacement chassis for David Coulthard's car.
"It's going to be a lot different than what I was doing before [driving an F1 car] because I was just testing small things on the car and not really driving the car in anger.
"Now I'm driving the car against the stopwatch and actually pushing it to the limit around the track and that's the big difference," said Hartley.
Regular test driver Sebastien Buemi will join Hartley in getting serious track time in the car. Buemi appears to have emerged as favourite for one of the two vacant seats at sister Red Bull team Toro Rosso and will drive on all three days.
Hartley will drive on the opening day before new team member Sebastian Vettel takes over for the rest of the week. It has been reported in various media outlets that Hartley was drafted in to test the Red Bull machine because of regular F1 driver Mark Webbers' absence due to injury.
Not so, as Hartley points out.
"To be honest, I got the call the day before Mark Webber injured himself. I know everyone thinks it was organised after his crash but it happened before that and I was shocked and was definitely not expecting it [getting to drive on an official test day].
"I got a phone call asking me what I was doing on the 15th [December] and I said I was testing Formula Three, only to be told I wasn't going to be doing that; instead, I'd be testing Formula One.
"I didn't ask too many questions and it was a pretty short phone call."
In the run-up to Monday's big day out, Hartley has had a seat fitting, studied a fair amount of data and gone through a lot of preparation for the track.
He will continue with all the other necessary nuances over the weekend in order to be at the top of his game, to make the most of this rare opportunity at the elite level of motor sport. "I felt comfortable driving the car earlier this year but this is going to be something else.
"Obviously I've got high expectations of myself but it's going to be tough and I'm not really sure what to expect," he said.
Hartley finished third in this season's British F3 championship with five race wins and finished his season on a strong note at the Macau Grand Prix, setting a new lap record while coming from 20th on the grid to finish third.
