Will Colton Herta make it to Formula 1?

As IndyCar racer and team owner Bryan Herta’s son, Colton Herta was always likely to develop an interest in motorsport.

But when his single-seater career started, Herta quickly set his sights on Europe. At age 15, he took part in the MSA Formula championship (now known as British F4), taking third place as a certain Lando Norris clinched his first of many junior titles.

Herta graduated to F3-level Euroformula Open in 2016, again finishing third in the standings behind the more experienced Leonardo Pulcini and Ferdinand Habsburg.

Was he aiming for F1 at the time? Not really.

“Actually, my goal isn’t Formula 1. I never really had that interest – especially these past seven years when one team has dominated,” he told Motorsport in December 2016, as Mercedes’ dominance peaked after Red Bull’s.

“It seems that if you get the wrong drive, you’re basically stuck forever in the middle of the pack, fighting hard just to get a point or two, and never being noticed by the big teams.

“It just bores me. No matter how good a driver you are, if the guy ahead is in a better car, he can pull away by 20 seconds before his first pitstop.”

So what was Herta doing in Europe?

“It’s better for learning, because the fields are bigger and deeper,” he said. “I learned more from my first year in Europe than I did in my first year racing in America. I was 14 when I moved over there, and it matured me greatly, faster than I would have done here. So I think it was the right choice to take, and I’m excited by what could come next.”

Success was on the cards in Indy Lights, where Herta was the Rookie of the Year in 2017 before being beaten to the 2018 title by debutant Pato O’Ward; he then graduated to IndyCar and triumphed at just his third attempt in the premier class, becoming the series’ youngest winner in history at 18 years old.

Herta clinched victory at Circuit of The Americas in 2019, becoming IndyCar’s youngest winner

Photo by: Getty Images

Over the next seven years, mostly at Andretti, Herta brought his record to nine victories in 117 races, finishing third in the 2020 championship and runner-up in 2024.

As early as 2019, Motorsport’s season review described him as a “bona fide superstar” and, except for a couple of error-prone campaigns in 2022 and 2023, he has usually been a frontrunner.

Meanwhile, F1 appeared on the horizon on several occasions. In 2021, as Andretti attempted to acquire the Sauber outfit, Herta tested the team’s simulator, but the deal fell through.

The American ran a two-day test with McLaren in July 2022, while Red Bull started seeking a replacement for Alpine-bound Pierre Gasly at AlphaTauri.

Herta had a two-day test with McLaren in 2021, his first in F1

Photo by: McLaren

The brand set its sights on Herta, but despite his decent results in IndyCar he had just 32 of the 40 required superlicence points to compete in the world championship. Red Bull gave up on Herta and picked Nyck de Vries instead.

The 22-year-old’s F1 hopes looked all but over, but Andretti’s F1 bid finally came to fruition under the Cadillac identity. General Motors’ backing – and upcoming engine programme – got the project over the line, amid Formula One Management’s reluctance to accept a new outfit that may not, from its point of view, “provide value to the championship”.

One much-discussed question was whether America’s newest F1 team would hire a driver from the United States. Amid interest from F2 frontrunner Jak Crawford, Cadillac picked possibly the most experienced line-up a start-up squad has ever had, with veterans Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas.

Cadillac prioritised race-winning experience above all else when picking its 2026 F1 line-up

Photo by: Joe Portlock / LAT Images via Getty Images

Former Sauber driver Zhou Guanyu got the reserve gig; Herta, soon to be 26, was hired as a test driver as he makes that bold switch from IndyCar to F2. In F1’s feeder series, he will attempt to collect – again – the missing superlicence points to compete in the world championship. The Californian is on 34, so he just needs six points – equating to a top-eight finish – and can collect some more by taking part in F1 free practice sessions anyway.

So, it won’t be about results as much as gaining experience and, most importantly, proving he’s got what it takes to succeed in the world championship, with a 2027 graduation not implausible. “He’s got to earn it, right?” Cadillac F1 team CEO Dan Towriss said last September when announcing Herta’s 2026 programme.

Towriss is expecting a top-10 result from his protege, who will be racing with Hitech, a British team that has been enjoying success in F2. It collected a combined 21 podium finishes in the last couple of years with Paul Aron, Luke Browning and Dino Beganovic.

However, asked by Motorsport if he was confident of achieving that requested top-10 finish in the championship and whether he might be aiming for more, Herta made it clear that he didn’t intend to just make up the numbers: “Everything that I hop into, I want to be competitive and I want to be strong.

“If the goal isn’t to win, then I don’t really see why you’d do it – so that’s my mindset. Either how unrealistic it is or how realistic it is, I don’t know. I guess time will have to tell.

Herta knows winning in F2 is a tall order, but he won’t settle for the top 10

Photo by: Getty Images

“But everything that I do in motorsport, I try to do 100%. And if you go into the mindset of ‘Oh, well, let’s try to work off and start inside the top 15 and then move forward from there’, I just don’t think it’s the right approach.

“For me, I want to be as quick as possible. I want to lead sessions, I want to win races. But I guess time will tell how difficult that is.”

Pre-season testing, which took place last week at Barcelona, was encouraging in that regard. Herta was just 12th in the three-day classification but he was under six tenths slower than pacesetter Rafael Camara, who is the reigning F3 champion, and exactly three tenths away from second place.

Herta described the contrast to IndyCar as a 180-degree shift. “This car is extremely different to everything that I’ve driven previously, so it is a big jump, it is a big difference,” he insisted. “There’s a lot of stuff to get used to.

“It’s getting better, but from my side, I just don’t think it’s completely fluid yet. It’s still going to take more time to get completely used to it and be like, ‘Okay, this is what I need to do, this is where I need to brake’, and know all these things pretty precisely before I get in the fight. I’m just not there yet. But it’s getting fluid.”

Herta has been getting used to F2 machinery

Photo by: Getty Images

What’s interesting about Herta’s career move is how unprecedented it is. Never has an IndyCar frontrunner switched to F1’s feeder series in the modern era. Admittedly, one might remember some F1 drivers moving (back) to F2 after a brief foray in the world championship – Gianmaria Bruni, Timo Glock, Romain Grosjean, Giorgio Pantano. But that was two decades ago and, unlike Herta, they were not well-established professional drivers.

The most relevant parallel might be drawn, after all, with Herta’s new team-mate.

Three years ago, Ritomo Miyata took the highest honors in Japanese motorsport, clinching the Super Formula and Super GT titles – thus proving his versatility in different disciplines, from single-seaters to sportscars. Then aged 24, Miyata had a bright future ahead as the main contender to replace Kamui Kobayashi in Toyota’s WEC line-up when the veteran-turned-team-boss eventually retired from racing.

Miyata left Japan to pursue a dual F2/ELMS campaign alongside his WEC reserve role, and while he took two victories in the ELMS he struggled immensely in F2, taking 19th position in the championship with Rodin. Miyata left the WEC project to focus on his F1 chances, but 17th was barely better last season with ART. All in all, he has scored one podium finish in 55 F2 races, but he’s giving it another try this year at Hitech.

Miyata’s switch to F2 is yet to pay off

Photo by: Clive Mason / Getty Images

The main problem for Miyata and Herta is Pirelli’s high-degradation rubber, which requires substantial management – unlike Yokohama and Firestone tyres in Super Formula and IndyCar respectively, which mostly let drivers push flat out.

In F2, qualifying requires nursing the tyres on out- and in-laps. Management is a key aspect of racecraft to make the most of the compounds’ potential, lest you find yourself powerless in the last few laps.

Most drivers get to grips with this aspect in F3, but this is significantly harder for the likes of Miyata and Herta, especially with a single 45-minute practice session before qualifying gets under way.

Herta himself is aware that his vast IndyCar experience, albeit not useless, will have little relevance this year.

“I don’t think it’s as much of an advantage as people might think,” he commented. “At this stage, whether you’re 18 or 25, you’re pretty much fully developed there. And there are some small things that you learn along the way, but as far as outright pace, you’re pretty much close to what your maximum will be. But it’s nice to have that experience.

“There’s a lot of things that are different, but there are also some similarities. So experience is key, and mistakes and whatnot are going to happen in racing, and you need to make sure to learn from them. And I’ve done a lot of mistakes in my career behind the wheel, so there’s a lot of lessons that I’ve learned – maybe more so than most of the people in this championship. But if that’s going to help me a lot, I don’t know. If it’s only going to help me one percent, I’ll take it.”

Miyata’s insight will be invaluable as Herta tackles a steep learning curve

Photo by: Getty Images

In that regard, having Miyata on the other side of the garage will be invaluable for Herta.

“What’s very helpful is having Ritomo as a team-mate also – a lot of F2 experience, and I think it’s going to be very helpful for me this year,” he said.

“Ritomo has a good, refined style of F2 driving, which has been important for me in my development because it is quite a different style of driving to most of the other formulas. So it’s been a big help so far, it’ll be a big help through the season – for lack of track running that you get in Formula 2 to get up to pace quickly – to have somebody that has that experience. This could be very helpful.”

How successful Herta will be in F2 is, obviously, difficult to predict. The field arguably looks slightly weaker than in recent years, with sophomores Alex Dunne and Dino Beganovic among the most likely title contenders, while the aforementioned Camara, hailing from the Ferrari academy (like Beganovic), could walk in Charles Leclerc’s footsteps by winning F3 and F2 back to back as a rookie.

Herta’s F2 form will therefore not be the only factor for him to secure a promotion to F1, as Cadillac will also evaluate him on his contribution as a test driver.

“He’ll be spending time on the F1 sim,” Towriss said. “So it’s not just what happens in F2. There’ll be FP1s that he’ll be involved with as well as sim work. And so we’ll look at the total body of work to judge his readiness for Formula 1.”

Towriss wants his protege to impress in F2 and when performing F1 test duties

Photo by: Cadillac Communications

“FP1 is probably going to be the most important thing to get me ready for Formula 1,” Herta admitted. “I don’t know exactly when those FP1s are going to come. It’s pretty far down on the priority list at the moment, but it’s been exciting. It’s very exciting to see them testing. I’ve been talking to a lot of people, they’re very happy with how it’s going. I can say they’ve seen some bumps along the way, but they’re very excited about the progress that they’re doing.”

In the end, whether Herta does make it to F1 may be out of his hands, in a way.

Regardless of how well the rookie does in F2 and in testing, he might need either Perez or Bottas to vastly outperform the sister Cadillac.

If you’re going to replace a veteran with a rookie, making that decision is much easier when you’re certain that the veteran’s results aren’t up to the required standard.

But if both 36-year-olds perform at a similar level, it certainly gets harder to picture Cadillac getting rid of one of them – and the bar for Herta to make the cut will be higher. As he wisely phrased it himself, only time will tell.

Even by the end of the year, whether Herta is ready to step up to F1 may not be black or white

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Formula 1 via Getty Images

We want your opinion!

– The Motorsport.com Team

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com