How Colton Herta is chasing his F1 dream

From Mario Andretti to Juan Pablo Montoya via Jacques Villeneuve, drivers moving to Formula 1 from the top level of American single-seaters have been a rarity, albeit a successful one given their feats in the world championship. This nearly feels like a relic of the past, yet Colton Herta has taken up that very challenge – via the Formula 2 route.

As the son of IndyCar racer and team owner Bryan Herta, Colton grew up around racing and briefly honed his skills in Europe – he was third in the 2015 MSA Formula (now known as British F4) championship, which was won by a certain Lando Norris, and in Euroformula Open in 2016 – before making his way back across the pond.

Indy Lights success, although the title eluded him, meant he graduated to IndyCar at just 18 years old, and he went on to become the championship’s youngest race winner in just his third start. Except for a couple of error-prone campaigns in 2022 and 2023, Herta established himself as a frontrunner of the series over his years with Andretti Autosport, as shown by nine wins across 20 podium finishes from 116 starts.

So why would he switch to F2, especially now? “The obvious goal is Formula 1,” Herta says matter-of-factly. “That’s why we’re doing this.” 

F1 has elusively lingered on the American’s mind for a long time. In 2021, while Andretti attempted to acquire the Sauber outfit, Herta tested the team’s simulator, but the deal fell through.

He then ran a two-day test with McLaren in 2022, while Red Bull targeted him as a replacement for Alpine-bound Pierre Gasly at AlphaTauri. But despite taking third and fifth in the IndyCar standings in 2020 and 2021, he was missing eight superlicence points from the 40 required, and the FIA wouldn’t budge.

Herta’s F1 hopes looked all but over, but Andretti’s newest F1 bid finally came to fruition under the Cadillac identity with General Motors’ backing, throwing the Californian a lifeline as a test and development driver – with a race seat plausible in a not-too-distant future.

Interestingly, of Herta’s 20 podium finishes in IndyCar, he took 18 on road courses, which obviously are more relevant to European-style racing than ovals. Still, F1 is drastically different to IndyCar in countless ways, hence Herta’s presence in F2 this year with the Hitech squad – a successful operation, which collected 21 podiums over the past two seasons.

Adapting to F2 is a huge challenge for Herta, especially as track time is limited; practice off in Melbourne put him on the back foot

Photo by: John Morris / AFP via Getty Images

The goal isn’t just to secure a superlicence (he needs just six points this year to do so, which equates to a top-eight finish in F2) but to gain valuable experience and prove he belongs in the world championship.

“Even though I’ve been on a lot of the tracks, it’s been 10 years, so a lot of them have changed quite a bit – kerb profiling, repaving,” Herta explains. More importantly, it’s been about adapting to a different driving style – the Dallara F2 2024 can’t be wrestled into corners in the same way as IndyCar’s Dallara DW12, with Herta admitting to facing a “huge learning curve”.

“The car, the tyre and how you produce lap time are very different to what I’m used to,” he details. “You can’t force this car into doing anything, whereas cars in the past that I’ve driven, it’s a lot easier to force them through corners and whatnot, and be quite aggressive with your driving style to get lap time out of it.

“So, it’s been like a full reset for me of what I’ve been doing for the last seven years, to understand, ‘OK, this is how we do it so we find lap time.’ But it needs to happen very quick, so I’m using the simulator a lot to understand where I need to find my time and how my driving style is hindering that. And then I’m trying to replicate it as fast as possible, because obviously in F2 the track time isn’t a lot, so you need to be able to perform quite quickly.”

“It’s been like a full reset for me of what I’ve been doing for the last seven years, to understand, ‘OK, this is how we do it so we find lap time’”
Colton Herta

Herta is right to make a point about track time. Pre-season testing was only three days at Barcelona; then each round features 45 minutes’ worth of free practice and a 30-minute qualifying session. In Melbourne, this was compounded by Herta crashing just eight laps into practice. He faced much headwind, but he did bounce back by qualifying 14th and racing to seventh in the feature race.

Still, the Australian weekend overall didn’t match his expectations, even though he always made clear that he didn’t expect to win – or even be ‘on the pace’ – on his debut.

“There were some good parts about it that were good to hold on to, but there were a lot of bad parts,” Herta admits. “I had the crash in practice, which just put our whole weekend a step behind everybody else, not only because I had never been to the track and driving the car for the first time on a race weekend, but there’s just so much that I had to keep up on. When you have a few less laps and you cut practice in half for yourself, it makes it impossible.

“I was happy that we progressed in every race to move forward. I think the race pace was very solid, actually. But qualifying is so important, and you need to qualify in the top 10 to get into that reversed grid where you can score points in both races. It’s very important to be able to do that. And I just hurt myself too much, to the point where we were going into qualifying and were just too far behind.

Herta’s tally of nine IndyCar victories kicked off with 2019 Austin triumph – at just 18 years old

Photo by: Getty Images

“It was disappointing from my perspective, but I think there was plenty of learning to be had. We weren’t expecting to just go out there and win anyways for our first weekend. But I was unsatisfied, for sure.”

Herta will see the glass half-empty but, as he points out, there were positives. His last standing start dated back to 6 November 2016, when he raced to victory at Barcelona in the Euroformula Open series; yet he didn’t look rusty in Melbourne, gaining two places on lap one in the sprint, then one position in the feature race. “That’s the least of the worries,” a reassuring Herta clarifies.

Still, F2 is a notoriously tricky series to jump into, especially when bypassing F3, and that’s in no small part down to the Pirelli rubber and the management it requires – much more than Firestone and Yokohama tyres in IndyCar and Super Formula respectively.

Coincidentally, Herta’s Hitech team-mate Ritomo Miyata switched to F2 in 2024 as the reigning Super Formula and Super GT champion, and he has noticeably struggled. His 57 races so far in F2 have delivered just one podium finish, but his hard-earned experience is invaluable to both drivers.

“He’s been very helpful when I’ve asked questions, for sure,” says Herta, who has also sought out advice from IndyCar’s F2 graduates. “He’s probably a guy that I can relate to a lot, seeing that our career paths are pretty similar.

“He’s got a lot of experience with the tyre, with the car and the understanding of how it all works. So to have him there is huge for me, just because it opens up a lot of things for how quick I can get up to speed and learn stuff, to be able to see his data, how he drives the car, his understanding of it, his understanding of the balance, when it’s right or when it’s wrong. There’s a lot of things that I can pick up on and learn from, with a guy like that.” 

The bottom line is, this season is key to Herta showing Cadillac what he can do. The team arguably doesn’t expect that much from him – CEO Dan Towriss wants a top-10 finish in the championship. Herta won’t settle for this, but he knows how arduous the challenge is.

“Whenever I step into a race car, I want to be competitive,” he asserts. “That’s what it comes down to. It doesn’t matter if we’re racing bikes in a backyard, the nature of myself is I’m going to want to win and I’m going to want to be competitive.”

Herta’s one-lap pace is a key string to his bow – last year in Toronto he racked up his 20th IndyCar pole

Photo by: Michael L Levitt / Lumen via Getty Images

In that regard, his vast experience in motorsport can only be a bonus. “I think when you’re at that 17, 18, 19 years old range, you haven’t peaked on your ability, but you’re very close to the maximum of how quick you can go in a lap, right?” points out the 26-year-old. 

“And your speed’s not going to get much quicker. It’s your mentality and how you go about working and perfecting your craft and race side that can get better.

“You’re always learning and you’re always getting better. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or not even made it to professional motorsports yet, or if you’re a guy like Lewis Hamilton: we’re always picking up on things constantly.” 

That’s precisely what Herta will need in order to maximise his potential and prove he deserves an F1 drive. Cadillac wants him to ‘earn it’, and the main stumbling block will be the team’s current line-up. Both Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas are multiple grand prix winners, among the most experienced drivers in F1 history. For Herta to just be considered will likely require one of the veterans to underperform.

“It’s probably just down to outright speed, right? That’s the most important thing, that’s what you get hired on, and then the rest follows” Colton Herta

Regardless, if he were to make his case, what would he describe as the main reason he should get that seat? “It’s probably just down to outright speed, right?” Herta ponders. “That’s the most important thing, that’s what you get hired on, and then the rest follows. If you look at what I was able to do in IndyCar – speed-wise and poles and whatnot – I think the one-lap pace is probably one of my specialities.”

Herta is not overstating his skills there. He set no fewer than 16 poles in IndyCar – more than anyone bar veterans Will Power, Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden among the series’ current crop. Again, 15 of these came on road courses.

“But overall you need to have everything, right?” he adds. And that’s what Cadillac expects from him. The team will also look at his FP1 and simulator performance in F1 to make a decision. So only if he proves to be a complete package will Herta reach the pinnacle of motorsport.

“If I did that, it would be incredible,” he concludes. “But that’s when the job really starts, that’s when you really have to perform.”

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the June 2026 issue and subscribe today. 

Can the American unseat Bottas or Perez at the Cadillac F1 squad?

Photo by: James Sutton / Formula 1 / Formula Motorsport Ltd via Getty Images