Herta’s F1 chance “very time sensitive” besides Andretti shot

The FIA gave Andretti’s new project the official go-ahead in October, subject to the team agreeing commercial terms with the F1 organisation and its CEO Stefano Domenicali, which is still pending.

Herta, who turns 24 in March, has won seven IndyCar races in his career – effectively all with Andretti Autosport, which supported Herta’s rookie year with Harding Steinbrenner Racing when he stormed onto the scene with two wins.

He remains under contract to Andretti through 2027 and is understood to be one of the highest-paid drivers on the IndyCar grid.

Speaking to media ahead of the 2024 IndyCar season, Herta admitted the clock was ticking on his chances of making the transition to F1 – having previously been linked to opportunities with AlphaTauri and Alpine in 2022, and he tested for McLaren.

“You know, I think it’s very time-sensitive,” he said. “I’m probably at the highest age that I could probably go over there with a team maybe besides Andretti.

“Yeah, so I don’t have anything to report on their side of things. I think their goal is still to get a Formula 1 team, and they’re still trying to.

“If that happens, we’ll have to see what timeline that is and how old I’ll be and where I’m at in my life at that point.

“For me, really just the main focus right now is IndyCar, and we’ll see where it goes.”

Herta suffered a poor 2023 season, finishing 10^th in points despite two pole positions. His only podium came at Toronto, while Andretti newcomer Kyle Kirkwood, 25, scored two victories – including the prized Long Beach Grand Prix.

“I think it was a season of kind of what could have gone wrong did,” explained Herta. “Yeah, it was just kind of all over the place.

“It was for sure probably my worst season in IndyCar, with only two poles and one podium, no win. It was the first time in my career that I hadn’t had a win in a year.

Photo by: Geoffrey M. Miller / Motorsport Images

Colton Herta, Andretti Autosport w/ Curb-Agajanian Honda spins

“The goal is to obviously get that back, and kind of going forward, working on the tempo through races and just having a more consistent weekend.

“There were some things that were definitely out of our control, and there were a lot of things that were in our control. So, kind of looking back at some of those races where we had mistakes, making sure that we note those down and stuff like that doesn’t…