Colton Herta’s Formula 2 season has been going from bad to worse, which nothing illustrates more clearly than his Monza weekend.
Former IndyCar frontrunner Herta was hired by the Cadillac Formula 1 team as a test and development driver for 2026, and he switched to F2 ahead of a potential graduation to the world championship.
But while F2 was always going to be a challenge, given he had no experience of the Pirelli rubber and wasn’t familiar with the tracks, Herta lies an underwhelming 17th in the standings.
Over 10 rounds, the Hitech driver has qualified in the top 12 just once, and Monza was a new low for him with 20th place, more than a second off the pace.
It wasn’t just about pace, though. Herta crashed out of the only F2 practice session when he put two wheels in the gravel at the exit of Lesmo 2 and spun into the inside wall. He then partook in Formula 1 FP1 as Cadillac fulfilled its rookie requirements, but his MAC-26 broke down after just one push lap with a suspected hydraulic issue. That 20th position in F2 qualifying compounded his troubled day.
This was Herta’s third FP1 outing, and he had been feeling “a lot more” comfortable in the Cadillac. “You know, just kind of having that little bit of knowledge about what the car wants, or what the car needs, how it wants to be driven,” he explained.
“All these cars have tiny differences that make them click. I'm driving and trying to find that, so having a bit more knowledge of what the car likes to do is a big help, it makes me feel more comfortable.
“When you only have an hour, it seems like, literally when you're inside the car and everything's happening, everything's happening so quick. It seems like you're in there for five minutes, so you get out and you're instantly like, ‘Oh I should have done this’ or ‘I should have done that’.
“I think everybody would say if they get a second chance at anything when they're driving they would do better, and for sure for me it probably would have been a pretty big step.”
Herta then progressed to just 15th place in the F2 sprint race on Saturday, and his feature race ended on lap 11, in the gravel at the exit of Parabolica; he was running 21st.
As a consequence, he’s stuck on 26 points in the standings, having taken just one top 12 finish in the last 10 races. His 151-point deficit to championship leader Nikola Tsolov, with 156 available in the remaining four rounds, means he’s all but mathematically out of contention for the title. Even the top 10, now 37 points away, currently seems like a tall order.
“What I want to do is I want to get to Formula 1 and I want to get there as fast as possible,” Herta said. “How realistic that is, I have yet to be told or know.” But a 2027 F1 drive can hardly be an option anymore.
