Colton Herta Misfires

It was announced Tuesday (Oct. 25), that Colton Herta, an IndyCar prodigy and F1 hopeful, has re-upped with Andretti Autosport for four more years.

On top of his current contract, which runs into the end of next season, the 22-year-old American is now committed to IndyCar through the 2027 season, when he’ll be 27 years old. A provision in the contract states that Herta will be able to leave the Andretti team to join the Andretti F1 team, if the entry were to be approved by FOM.

There are two reasons to Herta’s decision to sign on the dotted line, especially with no automatic out if an existing F1 team were to make an offer for his services. One is accepting that his bid to be the next big American F1 driver is largely over. Even with Logan Sargeant being provisionally named to a Williams seat this week, Herta had the hype among his fellow countrymen as a pre-existing IndyCar star that Sargeant really does not.

And honestly, that’s not a bad position to be in. “Winning IndyCar driver” is not a horrible job at all. It doesn’t pay as well as a grid position in F1, but 99% of rides in racing don’t anyway.

The other reason would be that Herta believes Andretti is the way to get into F1. And this, well, would not be a wise decision if that’s the reason he chose to go back there.

Andretti offers longevity, comfort (dad Bryan Herta is literally his chief strategist) and job security. It doesn’t offer consistent speed. The easiest way to go from IndyCar to F1 is to win the IndyCar championship. That’s something Andretti hasn’t done in 10 years now. Their drivers since have had exactly five top-five points finishes, which sounds impressive until you remember it’s a 20-car series most years and they are/were fielding three to four cars full time.

And it’s not like they are magically getting better. In 2022, they only won both races on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, and the outgoing Alexander Rossi and Herta tied for ninth in points (Rossi was given the position on a tiebreaker). Romain Grosjean went from being legitimately one of the most exciting drivers in the field in 2021 to being fairly anonymous in 2022, outside of a single podium at Long Beach.

It’s hard to imagine Herta having no interest from a more consistently competitive team like Chip Ganassi Racing, which is likely to have an opening after next season after Alex Palou completes his contract with them. Palou, of course, just wrapped up his first…