Last Updated on December 18 2025, 12:35 pm

Californian born Colton Herta is attempting what no one before him has done. Despite being a successful Indycar driver, his goal is to make the grade for Formula One.

All this was sparked by Red Bull’s interest in signing the American driver for their Alpha Tauri team for the 2023 season. Herta was a rising star in Indycar but despite seven wins by the age of 22, he was short of the points required to fulfil the FIA criteria for a super license.

Not governed by the FIA, the Indycar series despite being light years ahead of F2 in terms of speed is not valued as highly in the FIA’s accreditation list. Herta stood on 32 points and required 40 to make the F1 grade.

 

 

 

FIA devalue Indycar results

Red Bull believed they would get special dispensation for their target driver, yet it was not forthcoming and Herta returned to Indycar in 2023. The 40 points required for an F1 super license is accumulated across the last three seasons where an Indycar driver    is placed in the championship. 40-30-20-10-8-6-4-3-2-1 are awarded to the North American racing series whilst F2 gets 40-40-40-30-20-10-8-6-4-3.

Colton Herta made the monumental decision to quit Indycar for 2026 and to compete in the FIA’s junior series F2. There he is hoping to score enough points to finally qualify for his F1 super license and has been appointed reserve driver at the new Cadillac F1 team.

Last week TJ13 reported that the FIA has finally improved the points awarded for Indycar drivers, which now stands at 40-30-25-20-15-10-8-6-3-1. With a P3 and a P7 in the last two Indycar championships, Herta will – under the new points system – be required to finish in just eighth place to qualify for F1 in 2027.

Although despite coming from a superior racing series, Herta is under no illusions how difficult the task will be. “The main thing is whenever I am in the race car, I want to be competitive,” he told F2’s official website on the announcement of his plans to race with Hi-Tech next season. “That has to be the goal, to be competitive, and try to achieve that as quickly as possible.

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Herta exits Indycar for F2

“It would be foolish to sit here and think that I will be on the pace right away, that I will be on the pace and ready to win in my first race. I may be older, but speed-wise, these guys are just as fast as anybody out there.

“I definitely know the task at hand, I know it’s going to be a tough one, but I look forward to it. I’m here to learn, here to drive and to hopefully be fast,” concluded the Californian.

Of course there are a host of new circuits to learn for Herta and the F2 calendar for next year sees the series race exclusively at F1 venues, some fourteen in total. Yet the biggest learning curve for the American will be how to work the Pirelli tyres as in Indycar they use vastly different constructions from Firestone.

Even the Japanese Super Formula champion, Ritomo Miyata struggled with the F2 Pirelli, coming just seventeenth in the final F2 standings come the end of this year. Colton was spotted in November testing in a previous generation of F2 car on a wet Monza day in Italy.

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2 Day F2 test results for Herta

He has also been in contact with graduates from the F2 academy who are now racing in Indycar, Marcus Armstrong, Callum Ilott, Christian Lundgaard and Robert Shwartzman. Following the end of season F1 test in Abu Dhabi, the F2 teams took to the circuit for two days of testing.

On day one Colton completed 83 laps with a best time of 1:39.792 although he later revealed the sessions had been more about acclimatisation rather than pushing the car to its limits.

“It was all about getting comfortable, and I am still pretty far from being super comfortable in the car,” the 25-year-old told Speedcafe. “It’s good first steps, it’s such an important three days for us, it’s important to maximise everything that we do here. It’s fun to be here, fun to be in a car in the offseason, and I am looking forward to the next two days.”

On Thursday morning, Hi-Tech focused on shorter runs and qualifying simulations, with Herta dropping his time from the previous day to a 1:38.115. The afternoon was all about heavy fuel running with the American driver completing 172 laps across the two days behind the wheel.

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Herta just 15th quickest in F2 test

His best time ranked just fifteenth overall and was more than a second slower than front running Oliver Goethe for MP Motorsports. What was encouraging was that Herta was just four tenths slower than his team mate, former Super Formula champion, Ritomo Miyata, who will be starting his second season in F2.

Herta’s presence in F2 in 2026 should provide incremental interest and increase the series following around the world – particularly in the USA. The reaction of some of Herta’s Indycar peers suggest they believe he is good enough already to be part of the F1 circus.

Lando Norris agrees with this opinion and that the FIA penalises Indycar because it is run under its own governance. “I think he’s probably capable of driving a Formula 1 car and driving it at an incredibly high level,” McLaren driver Norris told Indy Star newspaper. 

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Norris ridicules FIA criteria for Indycar

“He’s probably better than most drivers that are in the ranks and coming up in F3 or F2, so I don’t think he should need to race in F2, if I was the boss.” Lando and Herta were team mates at Carlin a decade ago in the series no known as British F4. 

“IndyCar is one of the toughest series in the world,” Norris continued. “I think it’s an incredibly tough car to drive and I’ve driven it myself. But you can tell those things, and the level of those drivers is incredibly high. So I don’t know how many points they get in Indycar, but I would put them above the level of Formula 2.”

Yet Herta must go back to school for now and at 25 years of age he is a positive veteran in the F2 racing series. Yet his experience at Indycar, where like F2 all the cars are the same, should prove to be a performance differentiator. Racing F2 is a lot easier than hurtling around the Indianapolis Speedway during qualifying for the Indy500 at an average of 230mph.

 

 

 

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The French owned auto manufacturer Renault, first entered Formula One back in 1977. They entered as a constructor of both chassis and engines and in 1983 began supplying customer teams with the French built power units.

The company came and went as a works team entry several ties, although they delivered numerous race wins for customers most notably with Williams and with Benetton in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Renault’s golden era coincided with them having recruited a young Spaniard, called Fernando Alonso. After six years of Ferrari dominance, the French owned team broke the Scuderia’s run in 2005…. READ MORE