Colton Herta on two-day McLaren F1 test: 'I do think I'm fast enough'

Equipped with nearly half a year to ready himself for the horsepower jump, intuitive braking and addition of power steering compared to the Indy car he knows so well, Colton Herta impressed his potential future Formula 1 bosses during his two-day test in an MCL35M in Portugal this week.

Over the course of his two-day TPC (testing of a previous car) program with the McLaren F1 team, running the team’s 2021 car with a variety of tire compounds and fuel loads, Herta logged 162 laps (80 Monday and 82 Tuesday) totaling nearly 470 miles. In short order, he’ll switch back into IndyCar mode for the opening practice of the Honda Indy Toronto on Friday afternoon on the streets of the Canadian city.

But given what Herta called a “quite quick” acclimation to his first time in an F1 car, he doubted there would be any sort of hangover as he continues his duties for Andretti Autosport later this week.

“I feel like I got acclimated to the F1 car quite quickly,” Herta said Tuesday in a media call. “The biggest thing was putting a lap together. I felt like I got to the limit (of the car) midway through the (first) day, but that was just separate corners being put together. By the end of the second day, I was pretty confident in putting a lap together.

“Letting off the pitlane speed limiter with all that torque was incredible – even in such low RPMs. That was the biggest thing for me, just the straight-line speed, the acceleration and the braking. Obviously the cornering speeds were higher than you get in IndyCar, but that didn’t stick out to me. It is a completely different feel – a lot of that from a lack of power steering. I had to get used to slowing my hands down with the speeds a lot higher.”

Both Herta and McLaren F1 team principal Andreas Seidl were rather coy when asked how the 22-year-old’s lap times compared to those when F1 visited the Portimao circuit in 2020 and 2021, given how much and how quickly wind speeds and directions in the port city can change the track conditions. Temperatures, Herta added, were cooler than those weekends, and the tire compounds he ran weren’t identical to those F1 teams utilized the last couple years.

Over the next couple days, Seidl said, McLaren’s engineers will be able to parse through the loads of data pulled from Herta’s 162 laps and use their own skills and parameters to decide for themselves how the seven-time IndyCar race-winner stacks up against McLaren’s current driver tandem of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, as well as McLaren’s IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward, who ran a ‘young driver’ test day at Abu Dhabi late last year.

More on Colton Herta's F1 future:

• McLaren signs Herta to F1 testing role: 'Who knows what will come out of this'

• How Herta became a budding international racing star — and America's F1 hope

• Herta says F1's Miami GP 'like a music festival that happens to have a race'

• Herta testing with McLaren Formula 1 team at Portimao this week

“The team was quite impressed with how Colton was able to deal with all these challenges and his professional approach. What was great to see was his physical preparation that enabled him to keep going over the two days, knowing how challenging this can be in an F1 car,” Seidl said. “It allowed him to build up confidence and helped him find the right balance between taking risks and still keeping the car on-track, which is important as well.

“We’re very happy with how the test went.”

What may follow from this test for Herta and McLaren is still unclear. So far, the team has announced three drivers for its TPC program, Herta, Will Stevens (the F1 team’s simulator driver) and O’Ward – though McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown told IndyStar last week that O’Ward’s test is likely to come after the IndyCar season ends in mid-September. Per F1 regulations, all teams must run prospective drivers in Free Practice 1 sessions on Friday of at least two F1 weekends this season. Seidl said McLaren plans to begin exploring those options following the four-week break between the Hungarian Grand Prix (July 31) and the Belgian Grand Prix (Aug. 28).

Importantly for Herta and O’Ward, regarding their F1 prospects, each of those FP1 sessions awards hopeful drivers one point toward their 40 needed to obtain a super license to be eligible to run in F1. Taking into account their previous three IndyCar seasons, Herta has 32 points towards a license, O’Ward 30. Typically the system takes into account a driver’s three previous racing seasons, though it’s been temporarily adjusted to three of the last four if the span includes the pandemic-altered 2020 season.

Leading into Toronto, Herta sits 10th in IndyCar’s title chase. He’d need to make a significant jump up to 3rd-place (20 points) to ensure himself a license by the end of this year. Finishing 4th (10 points) would leave him at 38, presumably two FP1 sessions off the points threshold. Finishing 5th (8 points) or 6th (6 points) would require several more practice runs.

His current IndyCar deal with Andretti Autosport runs through the end of the 2023 season, though Michael Andretti hasn’t made it clear in various interviews this year whether his deal with Herta would allow the young driver to leave early, should he get an offer to run in F1 in 2023. Late last year and throughout 2022, it’s often been assumed Herta would be linked in an F1 endeavor with Andretti, but McLaren has made it clear they’re seriously looking at Herta in regards to their future – not just testing him as a favor to Brown’s longtime friend Andretti.

“Who has ever been in a bidding war that’s never been in an F1 car for an F1 seat? Yeah, that’s like the ultimate positive,” Herta told IndyStar earlier this year. “I have no clue what I would even think about doing. There’s a lot more unknown on the Andretti side, but maybe they’re more lenient on me. For sure, Zak is cutthroat. He’s a businessman, but I know he’d give me a fair shot.”

Officially, McLaren won’t have an F1 seat available until the 2024 season, after Ricciardo’s current deal expires in roughly 18 months. But in May, after he’d made some critical public comments of the Australian’s results through more than a year with the team, the CEO revealed McLaren may have the ability to make a switch early.

“There are mechanisms in which (McLaren and Ricciardo) are committed to each other and mechanisms in which we’re not,” Brown said. “We’re not getting the results we’ve both hoped for, but we’re both going to continue to push. He showed at Monza (in 2021) that he can win races, and we need to continue to develop our car. It’s not currently capable of winnings races, and we’d like to see it further up the grid.

“We’ll see how things develop and what he wants to do.”

For what it’s worth, Mario Andretti, Michael’s famous racing father and vocal partner through much of the public F1 business in recent months, told IndyStar he’d be supportive of Herta getting to F1 by any means necessary, even if it wasn’t with Andretti Global.

“The way I see it, Colton should take the best opportunity for himself,” the elder Andretti told IndyStar. “Of course for Michael, you want to latch onto the talent he thinks he’s cultivated, but as a driver, you have to look out for yourself.

“You only have one career, and whatever comes along, he needs to look at it very strongly. I think everybody will understand. The clock is ticking, and if McLaren says, ‘Okay, Colton, we’ll put you alongside Lando’ – go.”

Should he get that opportunity, Herta said he’s ready for the challenge, even if he’d require several more days in the car to get ‘race-ready.’ Seidl said Tuesday, “To get ready as an F1 rookie to do an F1 season, I would say you can’t have enough days (in the car).”

“Yeah, you can’t say no to that, or else you wouldn’t be a professional driver. I do think I’m fast enough,” Herta said. “Whether they agree or not, time will tell, and hopefully I get some more chances in the car. I did feel the limit of the car, though maybe not the consistency that would come from a few more days, but I felt like I was close.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: McLaren F1 'quite impressed' with Colton Herta's 2-day test at Portimao