Yahoo Autos Red Bull May Be Considering Colton Herta, America's Most Promising Driver, for F1
If you watch IndyCar, you know Colton Herta is already one of the most exciting drivers in all of auto racing. Andretti Autosport's young American star has the highlights, wins, and raw speed to match up with anyone in the world, but his continent-hopping pursuit of a Formula 1 seat seemed to have stalled out last offseason and not picked back up since. After a little bit of McLaren-related chaos, he reportedly has a new hope.
According to a report by RACER's Chris Medland, Herta is now in the picture if a seat opens up at Red Bull affiliate AlphaTauri. The scenario would only come into play if either Pierre Gasly or Yuki Tsunoda are not retained, but Gasly is seen as a major candidate at Alpine in the likely event that an existing dispute between McLaren and Alpine over driver Oscar Piastri ends with Piastri at McLaren. If Gasly does leave, Herta would be a logical choice to slot in as his replacement. If he does not, Tsunoda could be dropped after two tumultuous years to make room for Herta anyway.
Herta has been in pursuit of an F1 seat for some time now. Last year, he was linked to Sauber as part of Michael Andretti's failed push to buy the team. This year, he has tested with McLaren while his name has come up alongside Andretti's push to found a wholly new F1 team. With Andretti's F1 debut a year away even if it were approved tomorrow and McLaren looking set to sign Oscar Piastri away from Alpine, the opportunity at AlphaTauri would likely be Herta's only real path to the F1 grid in 2023.
Herta is a natural fit for an F1 team seeking talent. In his best moments in an IndyCar, he has a reputation for unmatchable speed. He has converted that into 7 wins and 9 poles at age 22, but the numbers do not demonstrate just how stunning Herta's actual on-track performance is on his best weekends. At tracks like Long Beach and Laguna Seca, he seems capable of an extra level of one-lap pace nobody else in the IndyCar paddock can unlock, no matter how experienced or talented they may be. He has some patience to learn, particularly when chasing down a leader in a race that looks like his to win, but that development can come at a team like AlphaTauri if he hopes to win F1 championships later in his career.
Herta still has one hurdle to clear before he can race in Formula 1, though qualification for racing in Formula 1 is officially contingent upon a superlicense, a special designation awarded to drivers who accrue 40 total points in a set number of years by either completing a satisfactory amount of the modern F1 ladder or excelling in another top-tier series. Because Herta (and his fellow IndyCar star Pato O'Ward, who lost his own chance with Red Bull over the issue) did not get any points for the 2018 Indy Lights campaign, he can only rely on his three completed IndyCar seasons. Those finishes of seventh, third, and fifth would easily qualify him in Formula 2, but IndyCar's qualifying points are inexplicably low and Herta has just 32.
The licensing issue does not mean he cannot race in F1 next year, but he would have to rely on a COVID-related waiver that starts at 30 points, accrue another 8 through practice session running, or simply be cleared by an unrelated exception to be written into the rulebook later. Given that Herta is a marketable American seen as a spectacular talent by fellow drivers in his own series, Formula 1 and Red Bull's business interests would both be substantial motivating factors to expedite the process of getting him onto the grid.
Red Bull will have a major competition interest in bringing Herta to the grid, too. While their top two seats are well-stocked for the future, their AlphaTauri team still has to field two drivers and their once-legendary stable of prospects has been low on talent for quite some time. While Yuki Tsunoda still has some hope to become a successful driver at AlphaTauri in his own right, he came to Red Bull through Honda's now-shuttered F1 development system. Red Bull's internal prospects have largely failed to make F1, with the team turning to sports car driver Brendon Hartley, former F1 driver Daniil Kvyat, and outside prospect Tsunoda in its second AlphaTauri seat since 2018. The team's most senior prospect is Juri Vips, who is currently struggling to tenth in a relatively weak Formula 2 field amid a season marred by his use of a racial slur on a live stream.
The team's failed push to get O'Ward, another external candidate, a license in 2018 is a blueprint for how Red Bull can react to their struggling farm system. Herta is much more ready for Formula 1 now than O'Ward was then, even if he would have to learn a new collection of tracks and tire regulations that Formula 2 and 3 drivers are trained for more directly.
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