Colton Herta’s F1 dreams fail to get a go-ahead as Red Bull withdraws support
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Youngest-ever IndyCar series winner Colton Herta‘s hopes of shifting to Formula 1 from 2023 have been squashed with Red Bull all but ceasing their efforts to help him make up his points deficit to gain a Super Licence for an AlphaTauri seat. The 22-year-old American had been looking forward to making his debut in the highest league of motorsports with Red Bull‘s sister team, but those possibilities seem quite bleak now.
According to the reports, Colton Herta only had 32 points while he needed 40 points to automatically get a Super Licence to enter into F1. He needed Red Bull to coax the FIA into giving him a special exemption for that permit, but the Milton-Keynes-based team is not showing any efforts to do that.
While there were some ways in which Herta could recover those points, one of them being by taking part in one of the several international series that are held in the winter, Red Bull decided that they did not want to spend any of their resources going down that potentially difficult road. And there also remained the risk that if he failed at the winter series, then he would not have enough points to gain a superlicence and AlphaTauri would also lack one of their recruits one a few weeks before the next season starts.
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Colton Herta not to be seen in F1 anytime soon
Red Bull was the most prominent team that was backing Colton Herta for entering F1, and now that they seem to have withdrawn their support, Herta is not going to be seen in the sport anytime soon. Speaking on this topic, the Team Advisor of the British outfit, Helmut Marko, said to Motorsport-Total, “It’s a shame that people don’t realize what value an American driver, especially a guy like Colton Herta, would have for the booming American market, especially with three F1 races.”
He also indicated that Red Bull had tried all they could by exploring several avenues to bring Herta into F1 to increase their fanbase in the United States, but the FIA did not even budge on the Super Licence matter. And now, it only remains to be seen if the American driver can make it into Formula 1 in the future, especially now that the FIA are planning even more Grands Prix to be held in the US.
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Riddhi Mondal
(1821 Articles Published)