Colton Herta admits he’d started to make peace with the idea that Formula 1 might have come and gone without him.
Not in a melodramatic way, either — more the grim realism of a driver who’d watched two serious routes towards the grid turn into dead ends, and who understood that F1’s appetite for you can disappear as quickly as it arrives. Speaking from Cadillac’s Silverstone base on the *Beyond the Grid* podcast, Herta described the period around Red Bull’s interest as “very real”, and the moment it collapsed as the point where the dream began to feel like it was slipping away.
“It was disappointing to have those two instances where I thought… maybe not so much on the Sauber one,” Herta said, referring to the earlier possibility that emerged during the ultimately unsuccessful attempt by Michael Andretti to take over the team. “But the AlphaTauri deal seemed very real to me.”
The catch, as ever, was the Super Licence. Red Bull wanted him, there was a contract on the table, and yet the one piece of bureaucracy that doesn’t care about hype or potential — the points tally — kept him from signing.
Herta’s recollection of that stretch is basically the opposite of the sanitised version these stories often become later on. It wasn’t a clean “yes” or “no”. It was a rolling, day-to-day probability that left him scanning reports, second-guessing what he was hearing, and trying not to end up with nothing at all.
“One day it was… maybe it’s 80 per cent,” he explained. “And then the next day he’s like, ‘40. Wait, we’ve clawed back, so maybe 60’. So there was a very real possibility.
“I had a contract from them. I was just unable to sign, because I didn’t have the Super Licence.”
It’s also telling how positively he talks about the way Red Bull handled it — because plenty of drivers come away from that system with a different story. Herta says his main point of contact, Helmut Marko, was blunt but clear, and that clarity mattered even when it stung.
“I really like the straightforwardness of dealing with Dr. Marko,” Herta said. And when it was put to him that there are no grey areas with Marko, he didn’t hesitate: “Exactly.
“And sometimes it hurts as a driver. You don’t want to hear some things. But sometimes you need to hear them.”
The brutal part of the Red Bull saga wasn’t simply the door closing; it was the timing. Herta couldn’t wait indefinitely while the numbers and politics shifted around him. Eventually he had to protect his career, re-sign in IndyCar, and accept that the moment had passed.
“And eventually, I couldn’t really wait too much more. I had to sign a new deal in IndyCar,” he said, crediting Michael Andretti and Dan Towriss for being “very gracious” in bringing him back. “So I signed with them, which ended up being the right thing. I would have had no Formula 1 seat and no IndyCar seat. Don’t know what I would have done then.”
That line lands because it’s not theoretical. Drivers can — and do — fall between categories when they gamble on F1 and lose. Herta is candid that he was close to being one of them.
Which is why Cadillac’s arrival has changed the emotional temperature of the whole conversation. For the first time since those near-misses, Herta isn’t talking like a man trying to keep a flickering possibility alive. He’s talking like someone with an actual programme, a timeline, and a team investment behind him.
Cadillac, F1’s newest team for 2026, has signed Herta as a test driver and put him back on the European ladder with Hitech in Formula 2. The mission is obvious: build the Super Licence case properly this time, and make him a viable option for a race seat when the opportunity comes. Herta is also set to take part in four FP1 sessions during the 2026 F1 season, beginning in Barcelona — valuable mileage, but also something else: visibility in the environment he’s been circling for years.
“And then this came around, and I was like, ‘Geez, count my lucky stars. This is an amazing opportunity’,” Herta said.
There’s an understated but important detail in how he describes settling into Cadillac’s base: familiarity. Herta’s not arriving as a wide-eyed outsider. He’s worked with people in this world before, raced in Europe, and recognises faces in the corridors — engineers, mechanics, names from earlier chapters. That matters at a team like Cadillac, which is trying to build credibility quickly in a paddock that doesn’t hand it out for free.
“And even walking around here,” he said, “a lot of guys from when I was racing in Europe… it’s cool, I didn’t realise how many people I knew until I came back here.”
Asked whether this now feels like “third time lucky”, Herta didn’t try to downplay it.
“Yeah, 100 per cent,” he said. “And, for me, as far as I’m concerned, I’m fully focused on making this one the one that counts and works.”
For now, the grind is Formula 2. Herta scored points in his first F2 feature race with seventh in Melbourne — a useful start rather than a headline-grabber, but early days in a championship that has a habit of punishing anyone who assumes it’ll bend to their reputation. Next up is a particularly loaded weekend: Formula 2’s first visit to Miami, on Herta’s home soil, with the Cadillac narrative following him into a grand prix paddock that will inevitably be watching for signs of progress.
Herta’s been around motorsport long enough to know that none of this guarantees the thing he actually wants. But he also knows what it looks like when the runway finally appears.
This time, at least, he’s not waiting for someone else’s percentages to swing his way. He’s got a plan, a car to learn, four FP1 outings in the diary — and, after years of almost, something that looks a lot more like momentum.
