Andretti insider drops clue about Colton Herta’s potential role with Cadillac F1

On November 25, F1 announced that Cadillac’s entry to F1 for the 2026 F1 season was accepted. Cadillac will be backed by General Motors and Andretti for this new venture, and several names for the driver lineup for the American F1 entrants have been thrown in the mix, including Colton Herta. Andretti insider Marshall Pruett has now come out and discussed the possibility of Herta's probable F1 future with Cadillac.

Marshall Pruett, in his podcast's latest episode MP1559 shared on November 27, discussed Herta's chances of joining the Cadillac F1 entry. Pruett is a former IndyCar engineer and team manager and subsequently knows the Andretti family quite well. The podcast host was asked about the odds of Herta being one of Cadillac’s drivers for F1.

Pruett said,

“Odds of Colton Herta being one of Cadillac's drivers in 2026, would say, pretty strong, assuming they get him a sufficient amount of super licence points. He might be a couple shy, not many. Does he want to? I think so. I asked him about this a month or two ago. He said that it's not exactly something that he's chasing but he would certainly be open to it,” he said (19:33 onwards).

“Colton received a paddock altering new contract a year ago, paying him more than double of what anybody else was receiving. This was all being done not just to hold on to him. This was at the time when the Andretti global F1 folks and program really were confident that they were going to make it into F1 and wanted to retain Colton, their hot young driver to be their lead. So they paid him basically like an F1 driver. So that's the thing I come back on Colton’s side,” he added.

Colton Herta finished the 2024 IndyCar season as the runner-up, showing excellent pace across the ovals and the permanent circuits. The Andretti global driver is only 24 years old and will only improve with experience.

While his 2024 performance puts him on the map for a Cadillac seat, the uncertainty around the super license points remains.

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Colton Herta’s Super Licence points situation

Colton Herta currently has 32 super license points accumulated over the past three seasons. 30 points for the 2nd place finish in the 2024 IndyCar series and one each from the 2022 and 2023 seasons.

A driver needs a total of 40 super license points over the three years preceding the application for the license.

AUTO: AUG 27 INDYCAR Bommarito Automotive Group 500 - Source: Getty

With Cadillac entering the sport in 2026, Colton Herta still has the 2025 IndyCar season to rack up the points. Finishing fourth or higher in the standing will give him enough points to qualify for a super license. However, if he finishes P5, an F1 practice session with 100 km mileage will also be enough to qualify.

The Andretti global driver was linked to AlphaTauri, but talks reportedly died after FIA refused Herta a super license. Over the last two years, the American was scheduled for multiple F1 tests but a lack of superlicence denied him of all those opportunities.