Why Long Beach Will Always Be No. 2 on Colton Herta's IndyCar List

You might say Colton Herta attended his first Long Beach Grand Prix at 14. Now that wouldn’t seem unusual except for one thing: the 14 was as in days old, not years.

And he’s been going to the NTT IndyCar Series' second-most popular race after the Indianapolis 500 ever since.

“My dad was racing there in 2000 and it's always early on in the year, and obviously as I was born in March, so my first time I went I was actually two weeks old,” the younger Herta told Autoweek. “I obviously don't remember any of that but I can remember it once I was about maybe four or five years old.

“Obviously, the cars are very different now than what they were back then. But the sounds, the smells, everything's very familiar and similar. I remember watching in what would be Turn 10, the fast lefthander before the hairpin. I remember watching practice from there quite a bit when I was younger, because you could stand right up against the fence there and get pretty close to the cars.

“But yeah, it's such a cool event. A lot of people turn up for it, which makes it even more fun for us when we get the stands full and everyone's having a good time.”

Now 23—years old, that is—Herta is a veteran not only of attending the annual street race at Long Beach first as a fan, but he’s gearing up for his fourth race there as an IndyCar driver this Sunday.

The California native won his “home” race in 2021, which was part of his best season in IndyCar to date, finishing the year with three wins, five podiums and an overall showing of fifth place for the entire season (he was third in the COVID 19-shortened 2020 season).

But Herta’s other two races at Long Beach illustrate how difficult the event can be: he finished 23rd the other two times, crashing out in each instance.

"No tracks really owe you anything,” Herta said when asked if Long Beach owes him another good finish after the two wrecks. “It's something that you’ve got to work for. And it's extremely difficult, especially now in IndyCar, because it's so competitive. Even getting a top five is extremely tough.

“So, you need to be on it. You need to have everything in place, the right strategy, the right setup, you need to be on top of your driving. But Long Beach is my favorite race weekend outside of the Indy 500. It was a race I grew up watching, grew up coming to, because it was it was local for me. So yeah, it's one that besides the 500 that I always want to win, for sure.”

But winning is just a part of the whole package. The huge crowds that attend, the great weather and all the other events associated with the big show make Long Beach so unique.

“I mean, it's always a good race, it always puts on a lot of action, and has really good passing opportunities,” Herta said. “And I think part of it too is just the history. It's been going on for a very long time. So many different series have raced there. It's been around for such a long time, everybody comes every year and some people have been coming for like 50 years or whatnot.

“So it's a race that has a little bit of everything. It's a strategy race, you might need to do some fuel saving at some parts. There's a lot of high intensity, really long straights to pass on, and it's very unforgiving.”

Herta is looking to earn his eighth career IndyCar win and first of 2023 Sunday in a season that has had its challenges already—and we’re only just two races into the 17-race campaign.

He finished a disappointing 20th due to being caught up in a wreck halfway through the season-opening race at St. Petersburg, Florida, a month ago, but rebounded with a significantly stronger seventh place outing two weeks ago at Texas Motor Speedway.

“I think it's been a bit crazy for everybody,” Herta said of the season to date. "There's very few people that have had two good races so far. It’s really bizarre to finish 20th at St. Pete after being taken out, then finish seventh at Texas and you wind up being 11th in the standings now.

“It's not been the best start, but we’ve been fast. And it's really exciting getting to Long Beach because we've had good street course cars. St. Pete was obviously not the best finish, but we were super-fast there. We've won here in the past and also have had super-fast cars. So I'm looking forward to and I have high expectations for the weekend.”

Herta is hoping that 2023 will be his best season ever in IndyCar. He’s hungry for a championship not only to show he belongs among the series’ best, but also because a title would go a long way towards potentially advancing him to his ultimate career goal of racing in Formula 1.

“I’ve always wanted to do both, F1 and IndyCar,” Herta said. “The only problem with that is I can always come back to IndyCar. I'll never be able to be something like 28 years old and say, ‘Okay, now I'm ready to go to Formula 1.’ The timing is really now. And I’m fortunate enough, I've shown what I can do in any kind of stripe. I would be able to transfer back over smoothly.

“(The incentive to go to F1 is) just something from a driver's perspective that you want to challenge yourself and you want to try different things.”

But even though 23 years old may seem young in racing terms, in F1, that’s practically middle age. That’s why Herta is in such a quest to join the global racing series soon.

“I think it really needs to kind of happen in the next three years,” he said. "Beyond that would be a bit of a stretch on being able to make it. It's definitely a young man's game, if you're not over there, when you're getting in the car, when you're 19, 20 21. Any older and you're kind of a dinosaur at that point, which is crazy to think, but that's what it is.”

Herta hopes to make it to F1 in the next three years, a timeline that is both coincidental and potentially fortuitous in the sense that his current IndyCar team owner, Michael Andretti, is also doing everything he can to enter F1 as a team owner during that same three-year time frame.

“It's an interesting thing,” Herta said of being in the right place and at the right time with Andretti—provided FIA and F1 eventually decide to expand the series from 10 to 11 two-car teams—or if Andretti buys into an existing operation, which remains on the table.

“If you told me this five years ago, I would never envision it coming or it becoming a thing,” Herta said. “I would never have thought about it. But Michael has had this on his radar for a very long time. It looks like they're close, they have the funding, they’re building a new shop, they have a lot of infrastructure to have a great Formula One team, not a mid-pack team.”

Because of his desire to race in F1, Herta has become a very astute observer of how that series has exploded in popularity in the U.S., driven very much in part by the reality TV series, “Drive To Survive.”

But at the same time, while F1 and Indy cars are both open-wheel rides, they’re very different – as are their followers/fans.

"It's very different,” Herta acknowledged. “I think the true hardcore race fans are more fans of NASCAR and IndyCar. And obviously Drive to Survive has shed a lot of light and made Formula One more popular, but still, it's very different. Formula One is more, I guess you could say, luxurious. And it's more of a party and about the cars and whatnot. And obviously, the drivers are also superstars.

“It's more about the car for that series. If you're not in the right car, you're gonna finish 10th or whatever and there's nothing you can really do about it. Whereas in IndyCar, it's more of a drivers championship. Obviously, there's discrepancies between the top teams and the bottom teams, but they're very minor compared to F1 or even NASCAR for that matter. You always have a chance of winning in IndyCar. It’s more for the hardcore fan that enjoys racing.

“Both have their pros and cons. There's no right or wrong answer for what you should like or whatnot. It's all personal preference. But for me, it's a lot of fun racing in IndyCar. I haven't raced in Formula One, so I can't say what it's like on that. But just from an outsider's perspective, IndyCar has quite a bit more action, more on-track passes and whatnot.”

Follow Autoweek contributor Jerry Bonkowski on Twitter @JerryBonkowski