Herta gets another Cadillac F1 practice to earn superlicence
Cadillac will give Colton Herta another practice outing at the Brazilian Grand Prix to earn him the last point he needs to finally secure his Formula 1 superlicence.
This will be Herta's sixth FP1 outing of the season with Cadillac and he'll replace Sergio Perez. The team only needed to do four to satisfy the rookie practice requirements - but Herta's still short of the 40 superlicence points needed.
That's despite the team initially believing Herta's Mexico FP1 appearance would get him there, which turned out to be wrong because of an error on IndyCar's website.
That error had Herta sixth in the IndyCar standings instead of seventh, creating a miscalculation of two extra superlicence points.
Cadillac did verify that erroneous calculation with the FIA earlier this year but it emerged over the Mexico GP weekend that Herta would need another session to get to 40 points.
Herta picks up one point for finishing 10th in IndyCar in 2023, 30 points for finishing runner-up in 2024, and four points for being seventh in 2025, which, with points for four FP1s (Herta didn't complete enough mileage at Monza to get the superlicence point), leaves him with 39 points currently.
Cadillac was already planning to run Herta in another FP1 session before the end of the year as he's one of the leading contenders to replace Valtteri Bottas in the team next season.
But he can't get that seat if he doesn't have a superlicence, so Cadillac ticking off the last point he needs at the first available opportunity is a logical move.
There's no guarantee he'll get the point in Brazil either - as he'll still need to complete at least 24 laps in FP1 to reach the necessary 100km to earn the point.
Cadillac suffered a major reliability issue in Mexico when Valtteri Bottas's front-left suspension failed dramatically.
The team is investigating the cause of the issue, having experienced similar problems on Perez's car earlier this year.
