The 2025 Indycar season finale last weekend in Nashville left a number of questions unanswered. The series greatest ever qualifier, Will Power with his 65 podiums was believed to be leaving Penske for a destination unknown, despite him being the best of their three drivers this year.
As it turned out, matters were to be swiftly resolved with Andretti’s Colton Herta – with 16 pole positions and 9 wins in Indycar – making the remarkable decision to pursue his Formula One career by moving to Europe and racing in F2.
With Herta being announced last night as Cadillac F1’s test driver, the long standing expectation that Mick Schumacher would join the team was finally dashed. The 25 year old Californian has described this as “a risky move” given he is betting on himself to impress in the sometimes crazy junior formula racing.
No guaranteed F1 drive
Colton has no promise of an F1 drive and currently isn’t even signed up to an F2 team, although the might of Cadillac will ensure that happens in due course. Training an already experienced driver to race in F2 is a unique project Cadillac are taking on and both Herta and Cadillac’s CEO Dan Towriss spoke about the move on the “Ask off track” podcast with James Hinchcliffe.
Towriss was quick to underline just how unconventional this step is. “I think Colton is taking a big risk,” he said. “We’ve got two experienced drivers in the car [Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez]. I’m confident Colton will get his shot, but he’s got to earn it, right? He’s taking that risk.
“This isn’t Colton signing [as a Cadillac F1 race driver] — which I think people should really take note of and admire Colton for that bold move. He’s not entitled to the seat. He’s not guaranteed the seat from that standpoint, he’s going over to prove that he belongs in Formula 1.
“What I applaud most about him is his willingness to be uncomfortable. When you come to a fork in the road, the most comfortable thing he could have done was say, ‘I’m well paid, I’m going to stay in IndyCar and go try to achieve this next thing’, but he chose the unconventional path. He’s going to be going into F2. He’s got to learn tracks. He’s got to learn tyres. Tyres are a big part of that, very different from IndyCar from that standpoint, and so I just couldn’t be more proud of Colton to be willing to take that risk, to pursue his dream.”
Sad to leave top team Andretti
Colton Herta then explained his motivation for the highly unusual career move. “The easy thing would be to stay in IndyCar, that would be simple for me. But for me, it’s a dream of mine. I want to fight for my dream, and that is to try to make it to Formula 1. And this is my opportunity.”
“It was an incredibly tough decision to make, because I know what I’m leaving behind. I’m leaving behind a great group of guys, an incredibly competitive championship where if it’s your day, you can win, and we’ve seen that’s not always the case in Formula 1, you need the car to compete.
“It’s a risk. So I thought this is my last shot at it. I want to do it. I want to take that chance. And so for me, it’s really just about fighting for my dream and that’s kind of what the opportunity was given to me from.”
Whilst the project has been under discussion for a while, Herta revealed the decision was made relatively late. “Obviously, there’s still the details to figure out, but the decision is relatively new,” he said. “And for me, why it took so long was because I cared so much about who I was working with in IndyCar. I cared so much about the guys that have been with me since I got to Andretti. And the ones that are new this year, the past few years.
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“So for me, it was a lot of ‘I have to do this, I have to be fully involved and it’s a big kind of risk for me’. But I’m also leaving behind a lot of good stuff. Not only team members, but racing, a lot of talented race car drivers.”
Herta addressed the matter of no F1 seat being guaranteed when asked if that was difficult to accept. “No, not for me, because I think as racing drivers you bet on yourself. You are constantly betting on yourself. I believe in myself. I believe that I’m fast enough to do it. That’s not saying it’s going to be easy, there’s going to be a lot of work to understand the differences from the grand prix racing to IndyCar racing.
“But it’s something that I’m going to work for, 100% diving into it. It’s going to be a lot of work. It’s going to be a lot of learning. There’s going to be a lot of things I’m going to have to pick up on quickly. But I believe that I can do it. If I didn’t think that I could do it — like I said, it’s a super big risk — I would stay in IndyCar. But I believe in myself, and I believe I’m fast enough.”
Towriss then observed, Herta has already accumulated a good amount of experience in the testing he has undertaken to date. “He’s built up an actual body of work that not everybody knows about, in Formula 1, in terms of some of the tests that he’s done. Even to drawing interest from Red Bull later on from there.”
Herta quicker than Sauber drivers
He recalled a rumoured story: “Within an hour, Herta was faster than a pair of Sauber drivers in its own sim when Andretti was looking at purchasing the team — that’s believed to be Antonio Giovinazzi and Kimi Raikkonen at the time.”
Colton Herta has been struggling to qualify for his F1 super license missing out by just a handful of points in the year Indycar was cut short by Covid-19. The FIA refused to bend their rules to take account of this and even now the American is just five points away from qualifying.
Those five points could be achieved by Herta completing five FP1 sessions before the end of the season, but as he explains: “Ultimately me and the team thought it would be best to integrate myself in Europe. The IndyCar schedule is so hectic for five months, and I wouldn’t have any time really to be over there and being in the sim or doing TPC tests and whatnot, FP1s, it would be tougher. So this kind of frees up my schedule a lot more to be able to dive kind of headfirst into it.”
Cadillac will ensure Herta gets the best opportunity with an F2 team although no details as to how those negotiations are going have been revealed. Yet there is a possibility Herta could complete in the Indy500 next season given filly the FIA have scheduled Monaco away from the Memorial Day holiday celebrated the last weekend of May in the states.
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Possible Indy500 entry for Herta
Herta was non committal about the opportunity: “I think it depends what I’m doing next year and how involved I am, and what that off time looks like for me. I think we all know about my love for IndyCar and especially the 500. If it makes sense it’s definitely something that I would be open to, but it has to make sense. And it can’t hold us back from the ultimate goal, which is trying to reach Formula 1 with Cadillac.”
Colton Herta’s journey is part fairytale, part reality check. Few would walk away from a paid seat in a top Indycar team IndyCar for a year in Formula 2 with no guarantees at the other end, but Herta insists: “I believe in myself, and I believe I’m fast enough.” That, as Jaques Villeneuve might say, is both admirable and terrifying.
The irony is that Cadillac doesn’t even have a car yet. Herta is betting on a dream where the factory still needs to build the machine. It’s like buying a one-way ticket on an airline that hasn’t released its first schedule of flights — bold, yes, but don’t forget the parachute.
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Cadillac: American driver in American F1 team
For Cadillac, the marketing angle is irresistible: an American driver, an American brand, fighting its way into F1 through Europe’s most brutal proving ground and Towriss admits: “He’s not guaranteed the seat… he’s going over to prove that he belongs.”
Yet in some ways Herta has nothing to lose. With Alex Palou dominating the Indycar scene in Max Verstappen style claiming four titles in the past five years even the better Indycar drivers are being eclipsed by the Spaniards generational talent. And as a proven winner in Indycar should the move to Europe go pear shaped, there will be a drive available for Herta back in Indycar.
Herta might yet prove the doubters wrong. But the gamble is as big as they come, and if it fails, the “last shot” he described will be remembered as one of the strangest detours in modern international racing.
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