Colton Herta endures nightmare F2 debut yet still targets Formula 1 seat by 2028

Colton Herta is refusing to abandon his Formula 1 dream despite a bruising debut Formula 2 campaign with Hitech that has left the American 19th in the drivers’ standings, 26 points to his name and no finish better than fifth place in the Barcelona sprint race.

The Cadillac protege made the bold decision to leave IndyCar and enter F2 without first competing in Formula 3, a path widely considered one of the most difficult routes into the sport. He acknowledged before the season that adapting to Pirelli tyres and the F2 machinery would take time — but the scale of his difficulties has exceeded even his own cautious expectations.

“Nothing in particular, it’s just been the whole thing,” Herta told Motorsport.com. “Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a whole bunch of positives at any point. For whatever reason, there’s been zero pace, and nothing has really changed. It’s unclear why we can’t put a weekend together from start to finish and it be completely strong.”

The numbers paint a stark picture. Herta was joint 11th-fastest in pre-season testing at Barcelona, just 0.574 seconds off pacesetter Rafael Camara, which offered genuine encouragement. But that form evaporated once the season began. He qualified 14th on average across the opening five rounds, then slipped to an average of 18th over the following eight qualifying sessions. At Baku, the deficit reached an alarming 3.091 seconds in Q2 — a gap Herta himself described as making “zero sense.”

Crashes have compounded the misery, with at least three incidents across the Monza and Madrid rounds alone.

Herta is adamant the early-season testing performances show the underlying pace is there, even if it has consistently failed to materialise on race weekends. “Through the winter testing, we were fairly strong. All the private testing that I’d done, I was strong, but for some reason on race weekends, it just hasn’t ever translated,” he said.

With the final rounds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi potentially under threat due to the conflict in Iran, Herta is determined to extract whatever value remains from the season. “I’ll try to get the most out of it,” he said. “We’ll keep working like we have two more races to do.”

Despite everything, the 24-year-old has not given up on reaching Formula 1 by 2028 — the target he set when committing to the F2 programme — and believes the experience, however painful, is still part of a credible path to the grid.