Yahoo Autos Colton Herta Is Worth Bending the Rules
Colton Herta currently seems to be just one step away from a Formula 1 ride, the first for an American since 2015 and the first for a former IndyCar series driver since 2009. Unfortunately, that hurdle is his eligibility for an FIA super license, and a lukewarm reception from luminaries like F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali seems to indicate that his attempts to qualify for a license on the basis of force majeure are not headed for an easy yes. It would mean Herta would miss out on his best-ever chance at Formula 1, Red Bull would miss out on its first choice of what would immediately be the top prospect in their entire farm system, and AlphaTauri would have to look elsewhere to fill its race seat in the immediate future. If that were to happen, all of auto racing should view that outcome as a disaster.
The actual argument against Herta's super license candidacy is pretty straightforward. Colton Herta has just 32 of the 40 points he would need to qualify for a super license and other drivers have that number handily, including others in IndyCar. However, accepting that accepts the idea that the super license points system has merit at all. When you look at how the system works, and why it exists in the first place, that conclusion becomes hard to justify.
The current points-based system was built hastily for the 2016 season, seemingly to keep Red Bull from repeating the reckless process they used to take a young driver directly from a third place finish in a regional Formula 3 series to F1 in the 2014-2015 offseason. It replaced much less stringent system based primarily on mileage restrictions. By mandating a certain number of points, one much easier to reach through F1's traditional ladder than through other means, the series effectively ensured that drivers would be in their ecosystem before their names first adorned the side of an F1 car.
Under the new rules, a driver must earn 40 points scored on a scale designed by the FIA over three of the past four years. The vast majority of these points are awarded by end-of-year championship standings in a category the FIA deems relevant to F1 progress, with substantial weight being given to the F1-supporting Formula 2 and Formula 3. IndyCar's champion is awarded 40 points, but points fall off substantially for IndyCar drivers past that; by contrast, the top three finishers in Formula 2 are all awarded the full 40 points and fifth place in Formula 2 holds the same weight as third in IndyCar. This is despite IndyCar's status as a senior series, one that does not graduate its champions as Formula 2 does and thus never weakens to make room for new prospects.
That system was designed in response to one driver, someone Red Bull moved up shockingly early. The driver the team rushed to the front of the line was Max Verstappen, now the brightest young star in the sport. Had the rule built in part in response to him been put in place sooner, he would have needed another year or two of development racing to get the seat an F1 team already knew he deserved. On a typical development ladder, he would have spent 2015 in the F1-supporting Formula 3 and 2016 in Formula 2; Verstappen instead spent 2015 at Toro Rosso and won his first grand prix in 2016.
So the system would have kept Verstappen out. Other than that, what impact has the super license rule set had on F1? It has so far been publicly known to keep just one other driver out of the series, Pato O'Ward. The McLaren IndyCar star has since won four times in the series en route to championship finishes of fourth and third. O'Ward would have replaced Daniil Kvyat at AlphaTauri in 2020; while O'Ward finished fourth in his first-ever full IndyCar season, Kvyat finished 14th in F1 before being dropped from the series entirely. O'Ward has two wins in IndyCar this year. Kvyat is now a part-time NASCAR driver.
Notably, the same system did not stop Nikita Mazepin. Thanks to that heavy weighting for F1's two on-tour development series, the one-year Haas driver easily qualified for a super license off the back of a fifth-place finish in the 2020 Formula 2 season and third in the 2022 GP3 (now Formula 3) season. Mazepin's disastrous career ended with him finishing 21st in his lone season attempting the 20-driver championship.
Unlike Mazepin, Herta has already long since proven that he can safely run a full season of senior-level competition. Herta is just 22, but on Sunday he will wrap up his fourth consecutive full season in IndyCar. If the super license system is designed to test competence, his four years of safe and fair competition in the highest series in North America at the top of the development ladder he went through should be enough.
Even if you sincerely believe that the absolute only way a driver can qualify for Formula 1 is to hit the right number of super license points in a system created in 2016 in no small part to prop up Formula 2 as a path to F1, Herta has an argument. Unlike F1, IndyCar races on both road courses and ovals. While Herta is a dominant road racer, he has not performed well on ovals in his career. Check the standings for just road courses and Herta finishes second in both 2021 and 2020. In 2020, he came just six points from winning the road and street championship. If super license points did not qualify oval events irrelevant to Formula 1, those two years alone would grant Herta 60 points.
All of that misses the real point here, though. As Red Bull has identified, Herta is a special prospect. In four years at an Andretti Autosport team that has not been among IndyCar's true elite in a very long time, Herta has seven wins, eleven podiums, and nine poles. More impressive than those numbers are what he actually looks like in the car during those races. Herta is visibly fast, with quick hands that lead to highlight saves. He's capable of tapping into one-lap speed his competitors struggle to understand, something both 2021 IndyCar champion Alex Palou and fellow would-be Red Bull prospect Pato O'Ward told Road & Track in our most recent issue. His issues are with consistency and what he does when the pressure to chase down a leader are on, but those are the issues a 22 year old prospect irons out on the job at a junior team like AlphaTauri. Hell, those are issues Ferrari lead driver Charles Leclerc has to this day.
Colton Herta is ready. All of racing deserves to see a talent like Colton Herta take a stab at becoming a Formula 1 driver No matter what the rule book says, Formula 1 and the FIA should work together to make sure he gets his shot. There's no guarantee he gets one again.
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