Herta looks better than ever - but F1 can wait

“It would have been useful a few years ago,” Colton Herta replied when asked by The Race about his second place finish in the 2024 IndyCar Series championship putting him closer than ever to a Formula 1 superlicence.

Even if it’s not going to lead to a F1 future right now, and those opportunities appear distant amid a new round of uncertainty over what’s happening with the Andretti team’s F1 bid, Herta’s season is a gain for IndyCar as he has really emerged as a stronger prospect than ever after an excellent year for him and his Andretti Global crew.

In many ways Herta has been the face of the Andretti F1 project and he remains a nailed-on driver for it, should an entry ever materialise. 

But he would have already been in F1 if he hadn’t been robbed of the AlphaTauri (now RB) chance that eventually went to Nyck de Vries back in 2022 because he didn’t have a superlicence.

At that point, many felt Herta's seven IndyCar race wins made him as eligible for F1 as any F2 protege - although in de Vries's case he'd won the Formula E championship as well - but IndyCar is somewhat underrated in the superlicence points total.

So anything short of a top three finish in arguably one of the most competitive and difficult single-seater championships is basically useless for your licence.

Herta’s second place in the IndyCar standings this year gets him to 32 points, with only eight points to find for a superlicence.

As F1 heads for its latest United States race at Austin (scene of Herta’s first IndyCar win in only his third series start back in 2019), the changes at Andretti are likely to make its F1 bid a fresh paddock talking point all over again, and second in IndyCar means Herta is officially the top American single-seater racer right now.

But if his comments don’t point to him thinking his chances of F1 have gone, they at least suggest it’s not the highest item in his thoughts right now.

“It's nice to have one, I guess,” he said when asked by The Race.

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“I think it's disrespectful for IndyCar how underrepresented it is [in the superlicence points]. But these are all things we know and we've talked about in the last three years…”

As excited as I would have been to see Herta in F1, I’ve always felt it would be an extremely risky move. He hasn’t had the specific training someone doing F3 and F2 would have had, gaining familiarity with the tracks and Pirelli tyres.

More importantly, F1 is not known for its patience in letting drivers get up to speed, his now former boss Michael Andretti is an example of how things haven't changed and a warning to what American drivers can face dropped in the F1 piranha pool.

There’s also no guarantee he would have earned as much money as his reported top of the tree IndyCar salary, at least in the short term.

Put simply, Herta would have jumped at an F1 move but it would have come with great risk and he risked facing a loss of patience before he’d had the time to adapt.

But F1’s loss is IndyCar’s gain as Herta made a big leap this season.

It wasn’t perfect. The Indianapolis 500 was a big blow as many felt Herta had a car capable of winning the race based on his practice performance, but he crashed out while in third place.

That took some time to get over and maybe even played into the next race, where he was on pole in Detroit but weather impacted his race day position and then he went off trying a low-odds overtake in almost ridiculous video game fashion.

But after that, he was only out of the top six two times in the final 11 races.

One of those was 11th at Iowa where he had led chunks of the race and was a credible victory threat before - of all people - Alex Palou crashed while Herta was in the pits to put him a lap down. Herta did well to recover from that, including an amazing save that demonstrated Herta’s incredible driving talent.

Then, in the first Milwaukee race, a wheel literally came off after a pitstop when he’d been on an off-sync strategy.

Those two races aside, his worst finish was sixth, and he added two wins and two podiums in that 11-race run to the end of the season.

Herta’s always been good at being reflective and picking out his biggest flaws at the end of the season, but the truth is that fixing just one thing is often not enough when you have to be near perfect to fight someone like Palou.

He’s often swung from one extreme to the other. In his rookie season in 2019 Herta was able to win races but felt he wasn’t consistent enough. In 2020, he was extremely consistent but didn’t get into the top three enough to mount a title challenge. It’s a constant battle to find the balance.

And the other thing is, how the team is performing is also obviously absolutely crucial.

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The car needs to be there for him and consistency is so often underpinned by good strategy and pitstops - which are controlled more by the team than Herta.

He's made a big leap, but it's hard to assess if this year has been a breakthrough. Herta has been far more consistent than last year and won two races - which is two more than in 2023.

But an improvement on arguably his worst season isn’t the end goal, and there have still been some of those errors you would like to see wiped out.

“There's a whole bunch of things we could have done to win the championship this year. We'll reflect on that, look at it going into the off-season," said Herta after the Nashville finale.

“It does hurt a little bit when you think about winning the last race, and he [Palou] didn't have a particularly strong one, so we could have made up a lot of points if we needed to in that championship fight.

“That's something that we'll look into in the off-season, how to shallow out the [peaks], make them a little bit better.”

In Herta’s defence, Palou himself crashed out of a race this year. And comparing to last year again, Andretti team-mate Kyle Kirkwood had two wins and this year he had none. 

Herta and Kirkwood were close at mid-season, but Herta’s consistency and wins meant he pulled away.

At Nashville he achieved one of his top aims: to win on an oval. Failing to do that has eaten away at him for years.

Yet, straight after finally doing that and in the process clinching a career-best championship result, he still wanted to talk about where this season had gone wrong.

The fact he’s not content with 2024 is proof you should always hold out hope that Herta can wrap up the perfect package to compete over a season. He's chasing the same level of excellence people expect of him because of his talent level.

Andretti has certainly benefitted from shrinking from four cars to three this year, spreading the personnel from the fourth car across its remaining three cars to allow a bit more freedom and less pressure.

Herta has revelled in the change, which also included adding Marcus Ericsson, who’s had a nightmare year but helped the two drivers he has joined.

The oval win for Herta feels like a big deal. It’s something Palou’s not managed in five seasons - and Herta’s netted one in his sixth.

He should have won at least a couple by now - Gateway 2021 being the most glaring incident that springs to mind when some sort of shaft broke during a pitstop to deny him a likely win.

Next year will be the ultimate proof of whether Herta can tweak his approach and attitude to deliver the first IndyCar title many people, including this writer, believe his raw speed and talent deserve.

But ‘being a bit more consistent’ is what basically any driver other than Palou is saying about their targets after this year, and it’s not easy - otherwise everyone would manage it.

It always feels tough critiquing Herta because he's a prodigious talent, often held to higher standards than others and therefore the harshness of that analysis and the expectations upon him can feel unbalanced, unfair even.

There were so few chinks in his armour this year and it was certainly Herta’s best.

What he does next will be one of the stories of 2025 and Palou should be worried about Herta as a prospect next season.

Right now, that’s more significant on Herta’s priority list than whether F1 will ever come calling for him, Andretti - or both.