The two-time FIA World Endurance Championship title winner, who raced for Toro Rosso in F1 last year, appears on the verge of a deal to drive the British RLR MSport team's LMP2 class Oreca 07 at Le Mans.

Hartley is known to be the high-profile signing RLR team boss Nick Reynolds has talked about as a replacement for Rebellion WEC driver Bruno Senna, who will race the car in the European Le Mans Series this year alongside Arjun Maini and John Farano but will be on duty for Rebellion at Le Mans.

Hartley, 29, already has a relationship with RLR after making his first steps in sportscar racing in 2012 driving an Oreca P2 car run by the Bolton-based team under the Murphy Prototypes banner.

One of his teammates at Le Mans the following year, when Murphy had set up its own operation, was Karun Chandhok, who manages Formula 2 convert Maini.

RLR will make its Le Mans debut this year under its own name after gaining an automatic entry for winning the 2018 ELMS LMP3 title.

Hartley, who is now part of the Ferrari F1 team's simulator programme, will make his sportscar return in the WEC at the Sebring 1000 Miles next month with the SMP Racing LMP1 team.

He will drive the #11 BR Engineering BR1 at Sebring and then at the Spa round in May in place of Jenson Button, whose Super GT Series commitments will prevent him from contesting those races.