Hanley began in karting and rapidly rose through British single-seater categories, competing in Formula Renault UK and the Eurocup series. His early pace brought him into the Renault Driver Development Programme, which backed him from 2006 to 2008. Under Renault's support, he stepped up to the Formula Renault 3.5 Series and in 2007 claimed the runner-up position in the overall championship standings, finishing behind Álvaro Parente.
In 2008 Hanley graduated to the GP2 Series — the primary feeder category to Formula One at the time — driving for the Barwa International Campos Team. After the first three rounds of the season, culminating at Monaco, he parted ways with the team by mutual consent. The Durango team offered him a seat at Magny-Cours for the remainder of the campaign. Despite demonstrating competitive pace, his GP2 campaign was hampered by early-season reliability problems and a shortage of sustained funding, preventing him from establishing a consistent championship presence.
In 2010, while also competing in Superleague Formula, Hanley served as the official Dallara GP2/11 test driver for Dallara and Pirelli — a role that kept him connected to the top tier of feeder-series machinery even as his own race programme wound down.
Following the end of his GP2 involvement, Hanley took an extended break from professional car racing and returned to high-level karting, competing at CIK-FIA events for several years. The five-year absence from car racing ultimately worked in his favour: under FIA driver-grading rules, the hiatus allowed him to re-enter professional sportscar competition with an adjusted grade — an advantage that opened doors in endurance racing.
Hanley's car-racing career was revitalized when he joined DragonSpeed, led by Elton Julian, for campaigns in the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) and the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). He was instrumental in the team's progression through the endurance ranks. A notable early result came at Spa in 2016, when he took an overall LMP2 victory alongside Henrik Hedman and Nicolas Lapierre.
His official WEC debut came at Spa in 2017, when TDS Racing drafted him in to replace the injured Matthieu Vaxivière. Continuing with DragonSpeed, Hanley later raced in the LMP1 class as a privateer. His biggest result came at the 2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona, where he and his co-drivers won the LMP2 class outright. In late 2015, he had also been among six young drivers invited by Audi Sport to test its RS5 DTM challenger at Jerez.
For the 2023 WEC season, United Autosports signed Hanley to substitute for Filipe Albuquerque in select rounds. United Autosports subsequently confirmed him for a full LMP2 tilt in the 2024 IMSA SportsCar Championship alongside Ben Keating. In 2026, Hanley was confirmed as a development driver for the McLaren MCL-HY, a top-class hypercar prototype developed by McLaren and United Autosports for the 2027 FIA WEC season.
Hanley made his NTT IndyCar Series debut in 2019 with DragonSpeed, an operation that was a part-time newcomer to the series with limited oval testing. At the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, he advanced to the second round of qualifying, started twelfth, and finished eighteenth. He also raced at the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama that year.
The centrepiece of his 2019 IndyCar campaign was qualifying for the 103rd Indianapolis 500. Having never raced on an oval prior to the season, Hanley secured the 27th starting position by averaging 227.482 mph in his Chevrolet-powered Dallara. A mechanical failure classified him thirty-second in the race. He returned to the Indianapolis 500 in 2020 again with DragonSpeed.
Hanley's career illustrates how a driver who falls short of Formula One in the traditional feeder-series window can rebuild and excel in a different discipline. His ability to adapt from formula car specialist to elite endurance prototype driver — and then to oval racing on the IndyCar circuit — placed him among the more versatile British racing professionals of his generation. His class victory at Daytona in 2020 and his subsequent roles with major endurance teams confirmed him as a respected figure in international sportscar competition.
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