MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – Among the Formula 1 paddock’s sea of cachet, opulence and fame, Colton Herta is slowly starting to find his place.
The six-time IndyCar race-winner traded in the black Converse high-tops and plain black T-shirt he wore for the Miami Grand Prix’s soft launch Thursday for white Gucci sneakers and a sand-colored shirt for Friday. He finally decided to give his 2019 Daytona 24 Hours class-winning prize (a Rolex) some mileage, now that he’s got another one from this past January he can keep locked away.
In the three years since he was last in the F1 paddock at Circuit of the Americas in 2019, he’s jumped from a Harding Steinbrenner Racing IndyCar team worried each week about funding to Andretti Autosport, where he has all the resources he could want. Herta’s since been added to McLaren F1’s testing program and could be turning laps at an F1 track during an F1 weekend as soon as this fall, Andreas Seidel and Zak Brown should tab him for an FP1 opportunity.
Not only does he feel more comfortable in the world of F1, but F1 is starting to notice Colton Herta more, too.
“I’ve won a lot more stuff in IndyCar (since 2019), since I was with a really small team. I was really just getting going then,” Herta told IndyStar Friday afternoon. “I hadn’t even done that much.”
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Three years ago, Herta was asking Brown for a VIP pass for access inside the gates, and then spent the rest of the weekend roaming around like a normal race fan. In south Florida this week, it’s Brown and Seidel inviting their potential F1 driver of the future into the team’s closely-guarded preparation meetings. Whenever McLaren’s current drivers Lando Norris (a former teammate of Herta’s during their early junior formula days in Europe), Daniel Ricciardo, Seidel and the team’s dozens of engineers sit down to talk this weekend, Herta will have a seat at the table.
Despite Michael Andretti’s continued assertions that Herta’s involvement with McLaren’s testing program is a favor to Andretti Global’s hopeful F1 aspirations, McLaren holds that Herta is under legitimate consideration for their team down the road. Notably, Ricciardo’s contract will be up at the end of 2023, and though they’ve given no indication yet of desiring a switch, they want to have things lined up in case that becomes necessary.
Herta’s absorption into the team in Miami is Step 1 of that evaluation process.
“It’s a big test, a big challenge for various reasons,” Seidel said Friday. “You have the physical side and how quick the cars actually are, and he’s also with the team this weekend to understand how we work as a team.
“He will some point have a seat-fit in Woking (home of the McLaren Racing headquarters) and will do some simulator work for sure, along with physical prep to be ready for the test, and we’ll have to see how it goes .”
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But until he’s tapped for an F1 ride, whether it be with Andretti, McLaren or elsewhere, Herta holds a unique view on the two sports that the most casual racing fans in the US often mistake for one another. The most striking difference after 24 hours being embedded in the team, Herta said, was the sheer number of people working on the car compared to what he’s used to in IndyCar. The number of Andretti Autosport team members it will take to operate his No. 26 Gainbridge Honda entry for this month’s Indianapolis 500 might not even fill the seats in Ricciardo or Norris’s own engineering meetings alone.
The grandeur F1 officials have to build a fake marina for real boats to sit on this weekend for the sheer sight of it, or the budget to be able to buy a block of real estate in Las Vegas for $240 million – that all tricks down to each team, each car and how they run.
“There’s just so many more engineers doing so many more things,” Herta said. “In IndyCar, I probably have three, and they’ve got maybe 20 per car. It’s interesting to see all the data they get from these cars, and I wouldn’t say they’re better prepared for a weekend, but they’ve just got so many more people doing so many different things.”
Though he hadn’t yet – and might not – spend too much time roaming the grounds around Hard Rock Stadium, Herta said the track walk he shared with Norris Thursday gave him a chance to take in much of what the Grand Prix has to offer outside 20 cars racing for worldwide supremacy. Though he felt like he wasn’t able to say how he felt the atmosphere compared to what has long been known as the Greatest Spectacle in Racing – “I don’t really even see any people until an hour before the race because I’m stuck in the engineering trailer” – Herta felt like the scene might best be compared to something outside racing entirely.
The art-adjacent fake marina, the millionaires and influencers longing to be seen and the headline-grabbing concerts almost make you forget for a second that there’s a race going on.
“The price of everything, it’s insane. For a grandstand ticket, you’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars,” he said. “It definitely does have that high-class field you think you’d expect from an F1 race, but this is even more than I ever felt at (Circuit of the Americas).
“It’s almost like a music festival that happens to have a race going on,” Herta said.
Though fans were only starting to trickle into the paddock Friday afternoon, Herta said he could imagine that, despite all the attention around this race – and F1 racing in America at-large – that IndyCar likely still offers a better fan experience for fans on- the ground. Outside the 500, most (if not all) the fans at IndyCar races can purchase a paddock pass to have a chance to rub shoulders with their favorite driver and, by the end of the weekend, snag an autograph or a selfie for less than the price of your favorite F1 team’s branded hat being sold on the grounds at Miami (as much as $130 in some places).
Even the who’s who of Miami – Mario Andretti, Danica Patrick, Jeff Gordon, Dan Marino, Ian Poulter and JJ Watt, as of Saturday morning – might get a minute with their driver of choice over the whole weekend. Those with less clout than that may well miss out entirely.
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“I’d say 99.9% of the people here are only going to see the drivers when they have their helmets on driving on-track, and the lucky few in here (in the paddock) don’t see them most of the time either ,” Herta said. “But you have to think, if IndyCar had one race a year in the US, do you think it would be like this too? It probably would be.
“If we only did the Indy 500 in the US, people would come from all over if they didn’t have any other chance to see an IndyCar race in their home state, whereas you can live almost anywhere in the US – besides maybe smack -dab in the middle of Montana – and you could probably drive four hours or less to an IndyCar race.”
The most passionate observation Herta had made while deep inside the F1 paddock for a little over 24 hours? It’s simple. Whether it’s from the Gainbridge suite, McLaren’s engineering HQ deep inside the team’s paddock hospitality center or walking on the track with his boyhood racing teammate, Herta sees a track that he has no way to race on yet.
He sees and hears and smells open-wheel cars he’s grown up dreaming of driving, and now as close as he’s ever been to accomplishing that dream, the longing has only grown stronger. His life has changed so much for the better in less than three years, but he’ll clearly be disappointed if, in three years more, that rapid change and rise in the motorsports world doesn’t continue.
“For sure you think about it – especially when you’re not driving,” he said of his F1 dreams. “Because being at the track when you’re not driving is the worst place you can be possible.”
Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.
