Racing
© Jonathan Borba
Cadillac will give Colton Herta his Formula 1 weekend debut in FP1 at Barcelona in June, the first step in an expected four-session rookie programme that could shape his long-term case for a full-time seat with the team.
For Herta, the outing is more than a debut milestone. It is a key part of the path he has set out with Cadillac in mind while he continues his Formula 2 campaign. Speaking on Beyond The Grid, Herta said, "It has always been my goal to get here, and the move to Formula 2 is to prepare myself as best I can to become a Formula 1 driver, with Cadillac in mind." He added that "it’s cool to see it all coming together" and called his first run in the car at Barcelona "super special."
He is also clear that Cadillac will judge the session on what it learns from him, not just on what he gets out of it. Herta said he would treat the chance seriously because "you want to be fast in any car you drive," but added that the bigger target was to make the run worthwhile for the team. "The team needs to see value, and they need to come out of it positively," he said. "It can't all just be about me and how fast I want to go."
Barcelona gives him the most stable platform possible for that first appearance. Herta raced at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Euroformula Open in 2016, finishing second in race one and winning race two, and he has also logged 205 laps there in Formula 2 pre-season testing. He said that familiarity should help even though the layout has changed since his previous race weekend there. "If I only have to relearn two corners, that’s totally okay," he said, adding that overall it is "a place where I’ll feel pretty comfortable, I think."
That comfort matters because Herta still has work to do to strengthen his wider F1 case through Formula 2. His first F2 weekend in Melbourne showed both the promise and the difficulty of the move. He crashed eight laps into the only practice session, qualified 14th, then recovered to seventh in the feature race to score his first points.
Reviewing that debut, Herta said, "There were some good aspects to take away, but there were also a lot of bad." He admitted the crash left him chasing the weekend from that point onward and said, "I damaged my own prospects too much" before qualifying. Even so, he felt the race pace was encouraging and underlined how important qualifying will be across the rest of the season.
That season remains central to any future opening with Cadillac, especially with Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas already in the team’s race line-up. In an exclusive Autosport interview, Herta said the strongest part of his argument is straightforward: "It probably just comes down to pure speed, right? That’s the most important thing." He pointed to his IndyCar record, where he has taken 16 pole positions, 15 of them on permanent road courses, as evidence of the one-lap pace he believes can carry over.
Barcelona will not decide his future on its own, but it gives Cadillac its first official chance to measure Herta in a grand prix weekend environment while he tries to turn Formula 2 progress into a credible challenge for an F1 seat.