Colton Herta’s Formula 1 ambitions have taken a serious beating in Formula 2, but the American is refusing to treat one disastrous season as the end of the road.
The Cadillac reserve driver sits just 19th in the F2 standings after a campaign that has offered precious little evidence of the pace expected from a driver once regarded as a leading American candidate for F1.
Herta has collected only 26 points with Hitech, with fifth place in the Barcelona Sprint remaining his best result. His qualifying performances have been particularly difficult to explain, with the gap to the front often stretching into territory that even Herta struggles to understand.
Yet despite the numbers, the 26-year-old insists his ultimate objective has not changed.
“My focus is still on getting into Formula 1, and I still believe I have a chance of doing that within the next two years,” he told Motorsport.com. “But I don’t know exactly what Cadillac’s plan is for me yet. That’s something I need to think about.”
An F2 experiment gone badly wrong
Herta knew he was taking a gamble by moving into F2. He had skipped Formula 3 altogether after successfully building his career in IndyCar in the United States, meaning he was immediately confronting unfamiliar machinery, Pirelli tyres and a different racing environment.
The 26-year-old had warned before the season that instant success would be unrealistic.
“It would be foolish of me to sit here and think that I’m going to be competitive straight away, that I’ll have the pace from the start and be capable of winning my first race. I may be older, but in terms of speed, these guys are just as fast as anyone out there,” he said at the time.
What followed, however, has gone considerably beyond the normal difficulties of adaptation.
Herta averaged 14th in qualifying across the first five weekends, carrying a deficit of 0.848 seconds. Over the next eight qualifying sessions, his average slipped to 18th and the gap grew to 1.088 seconds.
Baku was especially brutal. Herta was 2.484 seconds away from the pace in Q1 and more than three seconds adrift in Q2. There was no obvious explanation waiting for him afterwards.
“Nothing in particular,” he said, addressing his struggles. “It’s just been the whole package. Unfortunately, there haven’t really been many positives at any point. For whatever reason, the pace has been completely lacking, and that hasn’t really changed.
“It’s unclear why we can’t put together a consistently strong weekend from start to finish. I just find it baffling to be three seconds off in qualifying here. It makes absolutely no sense to me.”
That disconnect has made the season particularly frustrating because Herta insists the underlying speed has not disappeared altogether.
“We were pretty strong in winter testing. I was also strong in all the private testing I did. But for whatever reason, it has never translated to race weekends.”
Cadillac now holds the key
Herta’s predicament is awkward for Cadillac. The American manufacturer has invested in him as part of its F1 project, but his F2 results have made an immediate promotion difficult to justify.
Cadillac CEO Dan Towriss had previously identified a top-10 F2 finish as a target for Herta. With the season now nearing its conclusion and Herta languishing 19th, the shortfall is massive.
Herta says, however, that Cadillac has not delivered any formal verdict on his F2 campaign. Instead, the two sides are still discussing how he might fit into the F1 team’s plans for 2027.
“At the moment, I don’t have anything firmly agreed for next year,” Herta said. “We’re talking about it and figuring out what opportunities there are for me within the team.”
A second F2 season remains technically possible, although Herta’s enthusiasm for repeating the experiment is conspicuously absent.
“I said, ‘I have no interest in it.’ Coming back would be more interesting if there had been clear development and things like that. But there has been no progress whatsoever,” he admitted.
His work with Cadillac’s F1 operation has provided at least one source of encouragement. Herta recently completed a TPC test and says his performances in the team’s F1 machinery have been considerably more convincing than his F2 results.
“I just did a TPC test on Monday, which was very strong. The pace has been really strong in the Formula 1 simulator and during the TPC running. But for whatever reason, it just doesn’t translate to Formula 2.”
That leaves Herta in an unusual position: his most visible competitive campaign has damaged his F1 case, while his work inside Cadillac’s F1 programme continues to give him confidence that the underlying ability is still there.
Whether Cadillac agrees strongly enough to keep building around him remains to be seen. Reserve, testing and development duties could all form part of his 2027 role, but Herta’s preferred destination remains obvious.
The F2 standings may currently tell a painful story. Herta, though, is still betting that they do not tell the final one.
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via X and Facebook
The post Herta clings to F1 dream despite disastrous F2 campaign appeared first on F1i.com.
