Colton Herta's adaptation to F2 could define IndyCar's global reputation

This is a going-backward-to-go-forward move we haven't seen in major league sports.

Imagine the Buffalo Bills' Josh Allen announcing he was leaving the NFL after eight seasons to go back to college for a year with the hope of being drafted into a bigger, more global football series. It's beyond comprehension for the reigning NFL MVP, but there's no imagination required in the IndyCar Series, where one of its biggest names, Colton Herta, has chosen to take this real-life path by departing IndyCar to race in Formula 2 as the first step in a quest to become a Cadillac F1 driver.

Allen and Herta, both generational talents, made their professional debuts within a week of each other in 2018 and have gone on to become some of the most recognizable stars in their respective worlds. Eight years in, with 116 IndyCar starts, Herta finished second in the IndyCar championship for Andretti Global as recently as 2024, has nine victories to his credit plus, from 2019, the distinction of becoming IndyCar's youngest winner at the age of 18.

Now 25, the Californian is so entrenched in IndyCar that the series used his face -- and his face alone -- to adorn the drivers section of its media guide for 2025. He might not be the biggest name in IndyCar, but Herta has been an Allen-esque figure -- the perennial contender on the cusp of a breakthrough to the top -- which makes his rerouting to Formula 1's finishing school such a strange and unprecedented move.

Herta's bona fides are more than sufficient to go straight to F1, but he's chasing access to the grid, which has been denied due to a shortage of licensing points required to compete alongside the best from McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari and the rest.

In long ago times, a driver of Herta's caliber could dream of racing in F1, and if they had the talent, Grand Prix racing would welcome them without issue.

"I was in a midget in 1963, age 23, in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, and who was I thinking about? Dan Gurney, (who) just got right into Formula 1," 1978 F1 world champion Mario Andretti told ESPN. "And I'm thinking, 'Someday, that's where I want to be.' And I was in the third-of-a-mile dirt track in a midget thinking of Formula 1."

To capture the missing points, Herta and TWG Motorsports -- the parent company behind Cadillac F1 that's owned by Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walters -- crafted a bold plan to unplug their marquee IndyCar driver from home and hire the Hitech TGR F2 team to run Herta in 2026 as a means to earn points and qualify for a future F1 superlicense.

"It's now or never, and he knows that, and he's willing to take that chance," Andretti said. "That's how important it is to him. And that is a beautiful commitment I would support 3,000 percent, to go one step down to go two steps forward, but he knows what he's doing and he'll accomplish what he's after, I'm positive."

In theory, a front-line IndyCar driver like Herta should dominate the developing kids in F2, but it won't be an easy switch. He spent three days this month in Abu Dhabi for a group test, and by the third day, Herta was 14th fastest among the 22 drivers present in the morning session and 19th in the afternoon.

"It was all about getting comfortable, and I am still pretty far from being super comfortable in the car," Herta remarked at the midpoint of the test. "It's good first steps, it's such an important three days for us, it's important to maximize everything that we do here. It's fun to be here, fun to be in a car in the offseason, and I am looking forward to the next two days."

New York's Max Esterson was one of two Americans on the F2 grid in 2025, and though Texan Jak Crawford nearly won the championship on his third attempt, Esterson was alarmed by the bizarre tire-usage limitations and unfamiliar routines found during his rookie F2 season. Compared to the relatively free and hard running Herta is accustomed to in IndyCar with Firestone's robust rubber, Esterson says the Pirelli-shod F2 cars tend to penalize hard driving.

"The biggest change is the lack of useful laps," explained Esterson, who switched to IMSA's endurance sports car racing series for 2026. "The way the tire works, at pretty much every track, you do an out lap and then a warmup lap and then a push lap, and then you have to cool the tires. And the out lap and warmup lap are very structured and very slow; you're not actually driving at speed. The out lap is probably 20 or 30 seconds off the pace and you don't actually take a corner at speed at all. And same with the warmup lap. So it's a lot of treating the surface of the tire super delicately. That's the hard part. You just have to be careful not to damage the surface.

"Qualifying is hard to explain because you basically troll around, and then you arrive in Turn 1 at 200 miles an hour and have to nail it with the one good lap you have on the tires after trolling around for the previous five minutes. You have practice sessions, but your practice is on the hard compounds, so you basically have no experience on the qualifying tire before the first push lap, and then the tire is best on the first push lap. In IndyCar, you at least get to drive on the qualifying tire and get more useful laps. Credit is due to whoever does well, because it's a different skill set than old-school racing. It's perfection with very little preparation."

Herta's former Andretti teammate Pato O'Ward, who tests for the McLaren F1 team and leads its Arrow McLaren IndyCar program, is rooting for Herta to succeed. Some of the cheerleading is personal, and some -- the majority, frankly -- is for the sake of IndyCar.

"I want him to do well," O'Ward told ESPN. "Because this is definitely a risk that he's taking, maybe not so much financially, but more of a personal risk. I hope he gets that Formula 1 seat that we all think he's going to get, and when he gets there, hopefully he has that chance to actually show what we all know he can do and what we've seen in IndyCar. He's been a great competitor.

"I really hope he's got the tools in order to showcase himself because a lot of that is down to the car he's given by his team. He's very talented, but it won't automatically fall into his hands. You're up against guys that have been there for many years, that know how everything works with much more experience over there. There's a steep learning curve that he's going to have to go through.

"It's a very different driving style and it takes time to adapt. It's not just a flick of a switch, and like, 'Hey, I'm going to be instantly competitive.' If it doesn't go well, there's always going to be those guys that hook to that and use that as rage bait. So that's the reality."

From O'Ward's perspective, a front-running Herta in F2 will burnish IndyCar's reputation as a high-caliber series with formidable drivers. And if Herta struggles, O'Ward knows plenty within F1's rabid fan base will eviscerate Herta and IndyCar as a whole for their perceived inequities.

"I think it's for us to support his decision and to wish him the best for the sake of showing well for us," the Mexican driver added. "Because he is the first one that's going to make the move like he's doing from IndyCar going to F2. And we want that to be good, because it would only help the situation maybe with people that don't have a lot of good things to say about IndyCar. Colton doing well would be a win for IndyCar."