... And Brendon Hartley makes nine

40

When he makes his Formula 1 début next weekend at the Circuit of the Americas, Brendon Hartley will be just the ninth driver to hail from New Zealand to race in a Grand Prix.

The first driver from the land of the long white cloud was Bruce McLaren (pictured above). He drove for Cooper from 1958 until the end of 1965. He then set up his own eponymous race team, which became the McLaren F1 we know today.

It's a surprise to many that McLaren was never world champion - the closest he came was second in 1960. In total he won just four races, the last of them at Spa in 1968. Sadly he died in a test crash at Goodwood in 1970.

The most successful Kiwi to drive in Formula 1 was Denny Hulme (pictured below). He clinched the 1967 world championship with the Brabham team. After that he moved to McLaren's team and continued racing in Formula 1 until 1974. He died from a heart attack in 1992, aged 56.

Chris Amon was the longest serving F1 driver from New Zealand. His first race weekend was the 1963 Monaco Grand Prix, although he didn't start the race. His Parnell team mate Maurice Trintignant took over the car when his own developed a misfire.

Amon's last race was the 1976 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. He subsequently clashed heavily in qualifying in Canada and decided to call it a day. He had taken part in 96 Grands Prix and won five pole positions, but never won a race. He does however holds the record for the most different makes of car in an F1 career, with 13 in total. He died in 2016 from cancer.

As well as the 'big three', there was Tony Shelly who took part in the 1962 British Grand Prix in a non-works Lotus. Howden Ganley made 35 starts between 1971 and 1974 with BRM, Williams and March. Graham McRae made one start with Williams in 1973, and John Nicholson - who died last month aged 75 - made one start with Lyncar in the 1975 British Grand Prix.

The most recent Kiwi driver in Formula 1 was Mike Thackwell, who raced in two Canadian Grand Prix races with Tyrell and RAM in 1980 and 1984. He was just 19 years and 182 days old when he made his race début, the youngest-ever at that point. His record stood until Jamie Alguersuari raced in the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix.

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.