Sep.16 (GMM) Lando Norris believes American Indycar star Colton Herta deserves a Formula 1 seat now rather than waiting until 2027.
Herta, who is connected to Andretti and has been signed as Cadillac’s official test driver for 2026, does not yet qualify for an FIA super license.
The 25-year-old will be placed in Formula 2 next season to collect the required points, despite already proving himself at the top level of Indycar.
“I think he’s probably capable of driving a Formula 1 car and driving it at an incredibly high level,” McLaren driver Norris told Indy Star newspaper.
“He’s probably better than most drivers that are in the ranks and coming up in F3 or F2, so I don’t think he should need to race in F2, if I was the boss.”
Norris, who was teammate to Herta at Carlin a decade ago in the series now known as British F4, said the level in Indycar is underestimated.
“IndyCar is one of the toughest series in the world,” he said.
“I think it’s an incredibly tough car to drive and I’ve driven it myself. But you can tell those things, and the level of those drivers is incredibly high.
“So I don’t know how many points they get in Indycar, but I would put them above the level of Formula 2.”
Meanwhile, Bobby Epstein – chairman of the Circuit of the Americas and promoter of the US Grand Prix in Austin – told Newsweek that construction has already begun to expand the paddock for the 12th team for 2026.
“We have to build new garages, because there’s another team on the grid,” he revealed. “And someone said, ‘Well, you’re building the Cadillac garages.’ And I said, ‘What makes you think that garage is going to be for Cadillac? Because I don’t expect them to be the last-place team.'”
Epstein continued: “And they said, ‘Well, it goes by the year before’, so I forgot about that. So they’re automatically, by default, the Cadillac garages.”
Epstein added that an American driver’s success would lift F1’s profile even higher in the United States. “For the sport’s sake, separate from just COTA and the grand prix at our track, if there were an American champion driver, that would go a lot farther.
“That would take it to the next level.”
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