Cadillac's new Formula 1 test driver Colton Herta will leave IndyCar and will race in Formula 2 next year - with Cadillac F1 CEO Dan Towriss confirming as much.
This is all a part of Herta's goal to race in F1 with Cadillac, once he has the necessary F1 superlicence points - he's currently four short - and experience that he'll gain from racing on the F1 support bill.
Our team give their verdict on the move and the chances of Herta succeeding.
A silly move
Jack Benyon
I’m absolutely delighted to see this happen as a motorsport fan, crossovers are the coolest thing that happen in racing and it’s so rare we get someone ditching IndyCar for F1.
But, the pragmatist in me says this is a silly move. Let's say he bags the superlicence points needed over the next two seasons in F2 - I assume he'll do two, as Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez are contracted for the next two seasons, blocking a 2027 graduation to F1 - Herta would start that first F1 season in 2028 just before his 28th birthday.
That's fine my me, but I don't think any top teams will be queuing up to sign him if he has a great first season, because he'd already be 29 by the time the 2029 is in full swing, and that, typically, is just too old for the top teams.
This is too little, too late, and I know from working in F2 how hard that championship is.
If he struggles, then he's given up a plum IndyCar seat for what? If he succeeds in F2, there's still a million hurdles to jump before terming this deal a success.
A bizarre move, but one I am so, so excited to see play out. Especially because, at least on raw pace terms, Herta is every bit good enough for F1.
Total commitment to the Cadillac cause
Jon Noble
Turning your back on a plum seat in IndyCar for the huge unpredictability of a F2 campaign seems illogical in some senses.
However, for Herta there is a bigger picture at play here and it is one that involves him going all in to show how committed he is to getting that shot at an F1 race seat.
Yes, he could have bided his time in the United States to see how things played out with Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas over the next two years to then try to throw his hat into the ring for 2028.
But that would have run the risk of him being out of sight and out of mind - and all too easily overlooked for the time when Cadillac reckons it is the right time to go for a young American.
In taking on the test role and then twinning that with an F2 campaign, he is expressing total commitment to the cause in getting embedded in the F1 ecosystem.
Sure, results are not going to be easy to get in F2, as success is very much car- and engine-related, but in racing there he will get to learn the F1 tracks, the characteristics of modern-day Pirelli tyres, and spend each weekend closely observing F1 and the Cadillac operation, plus driving in a few Friday FP1s.
Throw all these elements together and that will do more to show Cadillac he is what it needs for the future than if he is several thousands miles away winning races on the other side of the Atlantic.
This idea is growing on me
Matt Beer
I still suspect that Herta will struggle and take some reputational damage in a series as specific as F2 after so many years in IndyCar and on the IndyCar tracks. But better to get that struggle and embarrassment out of the way in F2, alongside a suitably extensive old-car F1 prep programme and life in the simulator, than fall flat straight away in F1 because he's leaping straight in from too different a racing universe.
I don't doubt Herta could've developed into a decent F1 prospect already had he been steered that way from the outset - whether he looks respectable in F1 or not is going to be more about preparation than ability.
Having initially thought this whole Herta F2 concept was total madness, I'm now seeing the logic. If Cadillac is serious about having an American driver in its very American programme, and Herta is that guy (I'd still just about back him over Andretti IndyCar team-mate Kyle Kirkwood), then the Herta-F1 project doesn't gain anything from him carrying on winning occasional IndyCar races.
Get him to Europe, get him fully immersed in the F1 world, get the probably inevitable Michael Andretti at McLaren in 1993 stage of this process done and dusted in F2, then give him the best shot possible at F1.
This guy won at Austin on his third-ever IndyCar start as an 18-year-old. At that moment, he looked like both a certain multiple future IndyCar champion and a decent bet for an F1 future. Maybe - despite all these years of him and/or Andretti not living up to that promise - he can still be both, just maybe not in the order we once expected.
Never underestimate the allure of F1
Josh Suttill
I see a lot of arguments against this move and similar transfers of 'why throw away race-winning machinery in a top-level series for the chance to run around the back of the field in Formula 1'.
But that simply underestimates the allure and prestige of F1. It's what so many drivers build their whole careers towards, and it's why Felipe Drugovich has sat on the sidelines at Aston Martin for so long, only this year really racing elsewhere, having not wanted to miss his chance in F1, even if it's always been a long shot. It's why it took Mick Schumacher two years to fully embrace life post-F1, having so desperately tried to find a way back in after Haas dropped him.
It's the same reason why Alex Palou was willing to nuke his title-winning relationship with Chip Ganassi for a shot at F1 by moving to McLaren (even if he ultimately reneged on that deal).
And it's the same reason why Brendon Hartley and Nyck de Vries left behind WEC/Formula E title championships for a (failed) shot at Red Bull's second F1 team.
Some drivers will do whatever it takes, and Herta entering one of the toughest single-make series in the world - one in which the likes of Ollie Bearman, Callum Ilott, Schumacher and Dan Ticktum finished outside the top 10 in the standings in their rookie years - is absolutely worth the reputational risk if it helps him towards his F1 dream.
The right idea at the wrong time?
Scott Mitchell-Malm
I fear this is happening at least a year or two late for it to be done properly.
If Cadillac was really all-in on making a Herta F1 switch work, maybe it should have started already? On the Cadillac/TWG side, many of the key personnel are the same as when the bid to get on the grid started years ago in the Andretti days, so it could have set this in motion sooner.
Tying it all into Cadillac's F1 entry actually existing and bringing Herta into the fold officially is obviously the motivation now (even though it's limited if he is not eligible to also be a reserve driver by the start of next year) and being able to give him a testing programme under its own control is something that wasn't possible before.
But Herta did some work with McLaren in the past so, unless there's been a big secret programme all this time, the intervening years feel like a wasted opportunity not to continue with simulator work and private testing if TWG was so serious about Herta and so convinced it would get an F1 entry, with or without Andretti.
I’m also minded to think of something Herta said back in 2022, when there was talk about him going to a winter series to pick up the necessary superlicence points: "I feel like I shouldn't have to go race in a feeder series after I've been a professional driver for four years."
Now, a proper F2 campaign alongside an F1 testing programme is a different proposition to spending the winter in Asian F3 or something similar. And maybe that was just a comment on how undervalued he felt IndyCar was in the superlicence points system, rather than a feeling he'd been slighted.
But given his career is another few years further along, is it not possible that Herta thinks himself above F2? He'd be justified if so. And that could impact how he handles it.
There might be excellent reasons explaining all of the above. Time changes us all, so maybe Herta's mindset is different too. Maybe the very real shot at a 2028 Cadillac F1 seat is more motivation than he had back then.
There is, though, a risk this is being underestimated. Herta is a very good IndyCar driver but not a great one and if his development has stagnated there, it raises a question about what is possible when starting completely afresh chasing F1. The effort this is going to take to make it work - to fulfil his dream of getting onto the F1 grid - is absolutely massive.
I can't knock his willingness to give it a go - it's very brave, and definitely to be lauded. If he goes there and smashes it, it's a hell of an achievement and one of the great modern motorsport accomplishments.
But I fear it’s the right idea at the wrong time.
He's still got unfinished business in IndyCar
Val Khorounzhiy
I want to preface this by saying that, however this works out, it'll be a great storyline to follow and I'm enthusiastic about seeing it play out.
But the mooted-but-quickly-shot-down idea of Alex Palou driving for Red Bull had more logical appeal than Herta being a future 'maybe' for Cadillac - because Palou has done in IndyCar what he came there to do, and Herta has not.
That is not to say that it's right that Herta faces an F1 superlicence hurdle still. It's not. It's dumb. But it feels like Herta, for so long seemingly the anointed IndyCar driver put forward for an F1 switch, hadn't really broken through in his IndyCar journey since about year two or three. He certainly hasn't 'completed' the series. Palou has: he's winning titles for fun, now has an Indianapolis 500 win too.
Given how long Herta has been around, it's a little shocking that he is still 25, and if this doesn't work out he can still restart his IndyCar career down the line and try to climb the summit. And the F1 thing might well work out, of course, as beyond his IndyCar accomplishments, he was a credible rival to Lando Norris in Formula 4 - but any route to grand prix wins and a title feels like a massive long shot, whereas in IndyCar championship glory was attainable.
That's my only real reservation - that he's starting more or less from scratch without having got what he could out of IndyCar.
