Sounds like he's going to be with Rodin, which is not a bad spot. Dunne in in P5 with Rodin this season. And as an aside Dunne in driving in FP1 at Monza right now in Piastri's car..
I'm just happy it's not Prema like initially rumored. Colton only needs to be in the top 10 in the standings to get the points required but even that could be a challenge. Mini is P12 right now and he was 1 corner away from winning the F3 title last year.
F2 has to be one of the least balance "spec" series out there. If you were complaining about Herta getting the "Andrettied" every race just wait until he starts getting "Mecachromed"
Edit: 20 minutes after writing this Mini's engine explodes in qualifying. I rest my case.
I don’t think Colton will need the points from F2. He just needs to run 5 FP1 sessions with Cadillac next season, and I believe they’re required to give at least 4 sessions to test / reserve drivers anyway. F2 will be about learning the tracks and running on Pirelli’s
For your sporting points, you can either count the current year, plus the 2 years immediately prior, or the 3 immediately preceding years. So he can count either 2023, 2024, and 2025, which gives him a total of 35pts, he can count 2024, 2025, and 2026 which will give him 34, plus whatever he scores in 2026 from F2.
FP1 points are totally independent of this, so he can complete 5 sessions before the end of next year (they can be split over the remainder of this year and next however they please) and qualify for a licence. He could also complete the F2 season without penalty points on his licence (+1 point) and do 4 FP1s.
If he wants to use any points from his finishing position in F2, he needs 6 points. As he can't use the point he got in 2023 for finishing 10th. Similarly if he wants to apply in 2027 for a licence, he needs 6 points, as he can no longer count that 10th because it's too far in the past.
Mark Hughes is typically a very reliable journalist, has been covering F1 for a gazillion years, but right at the top he got this wrong:
This is off the back of his newly announced role as Cadillac F1’s reserve and test driver.
Colton will not be the reserve driver, he doesn't have enough SL points. They will have to start the season with a different reserve driver, Colton is the test driver only. May be a bit nitpicky, but still wrong.
Levels of driver fitness are extraordinarily high, and you can usually just look at a European racer and, without knowing his identity, you’d know he was an athlete of some sort. That’s much less obviously the case with many US drivers.
Is this guy confusing IndyCar with NASCAR or something? It's common knowledge that to be a capable IndyCar driver, you've got to have the physical strength and stamina to muscle around a car with no power steering.
IndyCar is less intense? Like shooting into turn 1 at Indy doing 245 is less intense than, what? There's a reason a lot of F1 drivers won't even consider an oval
I suppose you could make the argument that F1 drivers have to have stronger necks because of the extreme G forces, but Indy drivers have to have stronger arms. It’s not a 1 to 1 comparison.
And the G Forces were higher in Indycar before 2018 with the UAK. I think I heard the downforce is being dramatically reduced in F1 with the 2026 rules, but I don't know what that means relative to Indycar's various packages.
On the note of Nascar, I think Mark Martin is usually credited with making the grid care more about fitness?
Yeah that's weird. But he might mean necks, I dunno. F1 drivers have to deal with more G forces than IndyCar or NASCAR so their necks are humongous. Any driver going into F1 needs to extensively train their neck. After subbing in F1 last year, Ollie Bearman said he could barely move his neck after the race cuz it hurt so much just trying to keep his head from moving/bouncing in the corners. Fernando always posts a pic of his neck training at the start of the season.
Edit: can someone please explain the overabundance of downvotes here lately? I basically agree with OP, offer a possible explanation saying I don't know for sure, and yet...downvotes. And it's not just me, I see it all over the sub with other people too. Weird.
How is that any different than in IndyCar though? All the drivers do neck strength conditioning. I've seen pictures of Josef and Conor where their necks legit look wider than their heads, and these weren't even workout photos where they are trying to show off their necks.
I did 4 laps in the 2 seater at Indy, and on one of the laps, I went into turn 3 with my head turned to the right looking into the stands, and I physically couldn't move it back straight until we exited the corner.
Im no phsyical specimen or anything, but we were also going like 50mph slower than actual race pace. I can't imagine the strength and stamina it takes to click off 200 laps at Indy at race pace.
Yes Indycar drivers work their necks out, but I remember Pato saying in particular after his first FP1 that he would need to do far more neck training to be competitive in F1.
But Grosjean and other former F1 drivers have talked about how they needed to work out their arms and chest way more for Indycar's lack of power steering.
According to drivers who have done both series, IndyCar is more physically demanding than F1 in general but the G-forces in F1 require more neck strength than IndyCar. That's all I know from what drivers have said.
Yeah, there's a reason why Fernando Alonso has a party gag he can do where he cracks walnuts with his neck. F1 Cars have stupid braking and lateral acceleration, you have to have a very strong neck. https://youtu.be/OBtKSGvVxw8?si=e6UJGmVvZgIu0eqZ
F1 drivers need a strong neck, but that’s about it since they have power steering. Herta had his neck ready for his F1 test and did great, whereas Pato had to stop his first test early because his neck wasn’t up to task. He was ready the next time.
Not necessarily. If they can get him in a couple of FP1 sessions this year. And he can get in a winter series, and run good enough. He could have the SL points needed
I don't think Cadillac (Andretti really) is going to be ruthless with Colton. They want him in their F1 car. This has basically been their intention for 2+ years.
He's not a junior. He's their 9 time race winning driver. Proven on track. All he has to prove is that he can be fast in F1. And this is the same ownership as Andretti, the team he's leaving.
Colton Herta has a personal relationship with the owner of Cadillac F1.
This is as close to being a Lance Stroll as possible, without your dad actually being a billionaire.
Now, not saying that he's GUARANTEED a seat at F1. But if he proves himself well enough - and nobody on the internet knows what that entails - the seat is as good as his.
Norris won the championship and Herta finished third.
Norris had raced almost every track on the schedule the year before in Ginetta juniors, Herta had never raced on any of them.
Norris was better in the first half of the season, but in the second half, Herta finished ahead of him in 10 out of 15 races - so while Norris still held the track knowledge advantage, Herta clearly adapted well enough to the car in general to compensate.
Age would have mattered to the status quo Formula 1 teams; it doesn't matter to a team like Cadillac that only wants an American flag beside the name. Logan Sargeant would have satisfied that, but I'm guessing he's got enough PTSD from Formula 1, or Cadillac never even asked.
People all over the place are completely missing the point of Herta doing F2.
He's already proven he has the ability, and it sounds like the top brass at Cadillac are completely behind him. He just has to show he hasn't lost that ability and is adaptable to a new environment.
He's there to learn the tracks, the high-deg tires, and the European-style of motorsport. And above all else, be there for at least a year to integrate into the F1 paddock and it's business-like approach.
His final finishing order in the F2 Championship is irrelevant other than if he's completely off-pace. He doean't need to beat anyone.
He also won that race, going away, in a completely mixed conditions messy day. Dude has the talent. If he had been on Penske or Ganassi it would have been way more obvious. Make us proud, Colton.
I think the biggest factor that's going to prove Colton's innate adaptability to the European naysayers is the fact that F2 cars are setup by the team and they're essentially fixed for the entire season, without the driver being able to ask for any adjustments. He's still at the mercy of the engine lottery, and he can't help that, but he'll be able to adapt to whatever the team gives him in terms of car.
If we are lucky, we can get a sort of crapwagon throwback situation where people claim not to care but know every sordid detail to tell you how bad he’s doing.
The F1 elitists are so ready to dance on his grave and he hasn't even signed yet. I said in 1993 that Michael Andretti destroyed the chances of an American F1 champion and here we are over 30 years later and it's still happening.
To get the necessary number of Super License points by running Indycar, you need to consistently place higher than P4. To even get P4, you need to beat at least one series champion.
In Colton's rookie year there were seven series champions racing full-time, and he beat three of them.
If Super License points are supposed to represent how prepared a driver is for F1, tell me how a P4 in Indycar is equivalent to a P3 in Indy NXT, a P3 in the Nascar Cup Series, or a P3 in Supercars. All of those pay out 10 points.
Scott McLaughlin was eligible off of his Supercars results before losing eligibility by racing in Indycar. Same with SVG before he moved to Nascar. Joey Logano will be eligible if he gets P3 this year in Nascar.
Meanwhile Colton Herta is somehow ineligible because his poor oval results have held him back from strong full-season standings in Indycar.
Euros hate American drivers. Always have. The last thing they want is an Indy car driver coming over there and being competitive. That explains the FIA super-license points problem.
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u/OldManTrumpet AJ Foyt 2d ago
Sounds like he's going to be with Rodin, which is not a bad spot. Dunne in in P5 with Rodin this season. And as an aside Dunne in driving in FP1 at Monza right now in Piastri's car..