The shared past of IndyCar's champion and its next big star

We all know who makes up the IndyCar field: a bunch of very, very fast Europeans who came up through the ranks at home and, given the breaks, should or could have made it to Formula 1, a smattering of stars from Down Under, drivers who left F1 yet still have a top-line career ahead of them, and a pool of North Americans who worked their way up through the ladder system in the States.

But there's one more group.

When the IndyCar field lines up this Saturday at Texas Motor Speedway to get the season off to a belated start, two of the most under-the-spotlight drivers will be Team Penske's reigning and two-time champion Josef Newgarden, plus Colton Herta, a race winner as a star rookie in 2019 and now brought fully into the Andretti Autosport fold. Two Americans who, attracted by F1 rather than Indy, tried to make it in Europe.

Both Newgarden and Herta battled around the racetracks of Europe with Carlin, and they're not the only current IndyCar aces to have done so. Also among that number are the team's 2001 British Formula 3 champion Takuma Sato, World Series by Renault contender Will Power, GP3 racer Conor Daly (who pilots the solo Carlin Dallara-Chevrolet in Texas this weekend), and even A1GP Team Lebanon representative Graham Rahal.

But Newgarden and Herta are the current American IndyCar big-hitters to have jumped fully onto the F1 ladder with Carlin in their formative years only to be taken back to the States due to the demands of sponsors who wanted to see them race closer to home.

For Newgarden, his campaign in the inaugural GP3 Series in 2010 was something of a Plan B, because sponsorship was his biggest hurdle.

He arrived in the UK in late 2008 as a Team USA scholarship winner, and shocked the locals by winning the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch, before finishing runner-up in the British FFord Championship in 2009 at the wheel of a JTR Mygale.

Newgarden was under the wing of long-time Reynard leading-light Rick Gorne, who had been friends with Fortec Motorsport chief Richard Dutton since the 1970s. With promised investment from an American backer, Gorne introduced the parties for a planned British Formula 3 campaign in 2010.

After arriving at Oulton Park for a two-day pre-season official test, Newgarden never got out on the track. He sat in the Fortec Dallara-Mercedes prior to each session, ready to go, but repeated calls back to the team's office revealed that the deposit had not arrived, and Newgarden's F3 dream was over before it had begun.

"I think Josef excelled himself [in GP3] because he'd never done wings-and-slicks, and he was straight into a category with a fair bit of downforce, a fast car, very little testing" Trevor Carlin

Simultaneously, the then-controversial new GP3 Series had been launched. Compared to the F3 Dallara, the rival GP3 chassis looked pretty basic, and if that seemed agricultural then the ghastly 2.0-litre turbocharged Renault engine sounded as though it was labouring to bring in the harvest.

With some teams struggling to fill seats, here was an opportunity for an underfunded American kid without a drive.

"Rick Gorne called me lastminute.com and said could we do anything for Josef," recalls team boss Trevor Carlin. "We knew who he was because we'd seen him at the FFord meetings, and he was a nice kid. It wasn't the biggest championship back in the day, but he was doing a decent job, which is rare for the American kids that come over. Not many of them get to grips with it, and he was doing very well."

That's partly down to the differences in culture between European and American racing, as Carlin explains: "It's no holds barred, European racing, whereas in the States there are certain rules on blocking and stuff like that, especially when you're up against the experienced guys in Formula Ford who know all the tricks, brake-testing you in the middle of a corner and all that malarkey. You've got to have your wits about you."

At the time of Newgarden's arrival, Carlin had a vacancy alongside reigning Formula Renault UK champion Dean Smith and Brazilian Lucas Foresti, who'd signed up for a dual F3/GP3 programme.

"It was tough, because GP3 was a bit unknown then," says Carlin. "It had a good concept, but the engine they had in the first car wasn't particularly inspiring, and they had all sorts of issues with clutches and things, so it lost a bit of its shine before it got going. But in the end it turned out to be a pretty good little championship.

"We were late getting organised for the GP3 thing, so we weren't probably as well prepared as we should have been, but it turned out all right."

Newgarden certainly wasn't prepared - he'd leapt straight from FFord into a car with double the power and tons more downforce than anything he'd experienced before.

"It was a massive jump," points out Carlin. "Really he should have been doing a year of Formula Renault. But he skipped that, he skipped F3 and went straight into GP3.

"I think Josef excelled himself really because he'd never done wings-and-slicks, and he was straight into a category with a fair bit of downforce, a fast car, very little testing, so he acquitted himself really well. He learned a lot very quickly."

Results weren't great. Newgarden was nowhere in the first half of the season, but then got a pole at Hockenheim in tricky conditions - he'd qualified third, but grid penalties for the leading duo pushed him to the top. He faded to eighth, which should have given him reversed-grid pole, before he was punted off by Roberto Merhi on the final lap.

At the Hungaroring, seventh in the Saturday race meant he lined up on the front row for Sunday's reversed-grid race, with future IndyCar rival Alexander Rossi on pole, something Carlin feels was a sign of things to come. While Rossi won, a late mechanical problem denied Newgarden second place. At Monza's final round, he finished seventh and fifth to promote himself to 18th in the standings.

"It was just one of those years - if it could go wrong it did go wrong," says Carlin.

But if the stats made for depressing reading, Newgarden's attitude enamoured him with the team. "Oh, he was absolutely fab," Carlin enthuses. "Super-positive, great with the guys, great with his engineer [long-time Carlin man Paul Wallace]. He was just an absolute pleasure to work with.

"He was similar to Conor Daly to be honest. Laid-back and funny, and he'd just get in the car and go for it. He was a good racer. It was great fun. Anything you asked him to do he did."

"Colton was quick from day one. Lando hit the ground running and he was on it at the beginning, and the second half of the year Colton hit his stride and started delivering what he was really capable of" Trevor Carlin

Newgarden's other pressure was his scarily small budget. This remedied itself for 2011, but the backing he received was on condition that he raced in the States. He went to Indy Lights, won the title at the first attempt, fired himself into IndyCar, and the rest is history.

It was the same story for Herta, who'd had two years with Carlin by the time he returned home to the US to race in Indy Lights. Even more gallingly for the Surrey team, by this time it already had a Lights operation, but since Herta's father Bryan's IndyCar team had been absorbed into Andretti Autosport it was clear that his son was always going to move under this umbrella too.

While Newgarden was 19 when he rocked up at Carlin, Herta was a baby at 14, yet a year earlier he had already dominated the Pacific F1600 Championship and finished runner-up in the Skip Barber Summer Series. Here was a prodigy, and he was going to line up in 2015 alongside Lando Norris in the brand-new British Formula 4 Championship (then known as MSA Formula).

"I'd had some conversations with Bryan in the past regarding IndyCar, so I'd got to know him on the phone, and I'd been to a couple of IndyCar races scouting," explains Carlin. "We became reasonably pally to be honest. And then one day he calls me up, and said he'd heard about this new British F4 thing that was starting, and did we fancy running Colton? Of course we said, 'yes, we'd love to', and the rest is history.

"It's quite funny because it was 2014 we'd been having this conversation, and 2015 is when F4 started, and we started Indy Lights. So I was trying to find a way to put a team together in the States, and one of the things you need apart from the cars and people is a truck. Bryan had a truck - a race trailer - and we took the trailer as part-payment for Colton's budget!

"So that helped Colton get on board, and helped us get going with our Indy Lights team, so indirectly Colton and Bryan helped us begin in the States. Bryan brought Colton over first time and basically left him here [Colton ended up living with a Carlin mechanic]. The team became his guardian per se, but you'd never know he was the age he was - he was so happy to take care of himself, low-maintenance."

One hitch for Herta was that his 15th birthday fell less than a week before the opening round at Brands Hatch. And, says Carlin, it was difficult enough finding track time for 15-year-olds, let alone a driver who was 14.

"The MSA still hadn't got their heads around 15-year-olds. They started the championship up and didn't think about the way to sort it out so that the drivers could actually test. A lot of the tracks were pretty switched on and smart, some were really really strict about not letting 15-year-olds out on the circuit with anyone over 15, which is ridiculous because Colton would have done more driving than most 21-year-olds.

"He didn't miss a lot of running, because we do testing at Pembrey and places like that so he got plenty of mileage."

Herta bagged a couple of podiums before the summer break, but returned a lot stronger in the second half of the season, scoring four wins among an infamous battle between Norris, Dan Ticktum and Ricky Collard. That promoted him to third in the points.

"Colton was quick from day one," says Carlin. "Lando hit the ground running and he was on it at the beginning of the year, and the second half of the year Colton hit his stride and started delivering what he was really capable of. He was really strong then.

"He needs a little bit of time to settle himself, and once he's got the hang of it, he's got incredible car control, so he pushes to the absolute limit all the time. In some cars and some categories you just need to back it off a little to get the ultimate pace. Once he finds that switch to get the ultimate laptime, then he's all over it.

"'Hooligan Herta' - that's what we called him! When you used to watch the onboard from F4 the action on the steering wheel was just incredible, just absolute madness, hooliganish. The way the front suspension geometry was, the more you turned the wheel it would scrub speed, so if you could keep the steering wheel still you'd go faster in a straight line. And Colton was always having a bit of a wiggle on the steering.

"With Colton it was all going on, which cost him a little bit of laptime, but once he calmed it down he was a natural at it."

The initial plan for 2016 was a step up to the new BRDC British F3 Championship, but the opening round at Snetterton fell just before Herta's 16th birthday, meaning he'd have to skip it. Fortunately, Carlin was also setting up a new team for Euroformula Open - using the then-current FIA F3 car but with spec Toyota engines - and had a berth alongside Keyvan Andres and Ameya Vaidyanathan for a series that started a month after Herta's birthday.

"Both of them would have been absolutely capable of being top-quality F1 drivers, and it's bizarre to me that they're not" Trevor Carlin

"We're big fans of the Dallara 312 generation of cars and the driving style it promotes and all that stuff," asserts Carlin. "We were starting EFO, which had great circuits and a great car, and when Bryan heard we were doing that he said, 'well, if Colton can't do the full season in British F3, let's do EFO.' He learnt a lot, he enjoyed driving the car, and the same deal - he was really strong in the second half of the year."

On his EFO debut, Herta clashed with Jack Aitken at Estoril and smacked the wall. Fourth time out, he got a pole at Silverstone, made a poor start and then collided with eventual champion Leonardo Pulcini. It all clicked in round five of eight at the Red Bull Ring, with a double pole and two wins, and further victories came at Jerez and Barcelona on his way to third in the championship.

The logical next step for Herta would have been to graduate to the F3 European Championship for 2017 with Carlin, where he would have partnered Norris once again. But the money behind his career called him back to the States. Where would he be now had he continued in Europe?

"To my mind, he would have been a prime pick for a Haas seat," says Carlin. "Really, he would have had the potential and that's what should have happened. But for some random reason the American team in F1 don't seem to want to pick American drivers. I don't understand it.

"It's all very well having one experienced driver in the team, but you'd think an American team would want to reap the benefit of having a young American driver - ie Josef Newgarden or Colton Herta. Both of them would have been absolutely capable of being top-quality F1 drivers, and it's bizarre to me that they're not."

But Carlin is philosophical that they had to further their careers in the States: "They both wanted to continue down the GP3/GP2 path, get as close to F1 as possible, but they both had sponsors that were happy to carry on supporting them but only if they raced in the US.

"If you've got an American sponsor, they want coverage in America, and they want to be able to go to the race themselves. Having to travel all the way to Europe to go and see their protege race is a pain in the arse if you can just get in a private plane and nip up to Road America and Detroit or wherever. That's sort of the way it went, unfortunately for us, but it's turned out brilliantly for them, especially Josef."

Newgarden, says Carlin, is "the American golden boy, isn't he? He's a hard worker, he's naturally talented, he's feisty, he's a sponsors' dream, he's so conscientious and so outgoing. He could have made it in Europe and F1 so for sure he was always going to make it in the States."