Herta’s FP1 debut for Cadillac confirmed in Barcelona

Colton Herta will make his FP1 debut for Cadillac at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix in June, the team has announced.

Cadillac has confirmed Herta will carry out four practice appearances for the team, fulfilling the entirety of its mandatory rookie outings in which race drivers give up a practice session on two occasions each. The F1 track time comes as part of his role as a test driver for Cadillac, and while the remaining outings have yet to be finalized, Herta starts at a circuit he has raced on in the past.

“It's a track that we're all super familiar with,” Herta said. “I know when I was over here racing in F3 and F4, it was a hot spot for winter testing in the junior categories, although the track has changed quite a bit since I've been there last.

“For sure it's going to help having that experience and the knowledge of, ‘Hey look, this is where this bump is or maybe this is the curb that you can take or can't take.’ So having that little bit of that knowledge from the F2 testing is going to be helpful for sure.”

With F2 adding races in Miami and Montreal next month following the postponement of the two rounds in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Herta says his focus has been on that new challenge so far and he has done little in the way of simulator running in F1.

“I haven't done too much, and I actually haven't done any since the season started. I think the sim program's going to ramp up here actually pretty soon in preparation for these FP1s," he said. "But when I had driven it, the car hadn't even done a winter test yet, so it was very early on and it was a pretty big guessing game.

“But from the feedback that I've seen from Checo [Perez] and Valtteri [Bottas], it seems like the guessing was pretty accurate as far as mechanical and engine side. So, I think it was positive. I think I'll get my next taste here in the next few weeks and have a better understanding where I need to be at before I get in the real thing.”

Given the fact his first FP1 outing will come during an F2 race weekend in Barcelona, Herta says he is planning to lean on last year’s Hitech drivers, who went through a similar process to understand the challenges such a schedule can provide.

“I’m not worried about it," he said. "I think the good thing about being with Hitech is they've had quite a bit of experience with this, and even just looking at last year, I don't know if Dino [Beganovic] did an FP1, maybe he did, but I know Luke [Browning] did a few, and so their engineers and their team understand it.

“And then working closely with the people here at Cadillac, because that's going to be an important thing. You go from the F2 practice straight to the F1 car for practice, and then maybe 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and you hop right back into the F2 car for qualifying.

“So there's a huge speed disparity that you need to get around. I know it's going to be a hard thing, difficult thing, but I've seen some people have success with it, and some people not so much.

“I think it's going to be something where, maybe I can reach out to Luke and see what he thinks about it. Obviously talk to the engineers and have a clear plan or clear understanding of what the driving tendencies are in both of those, and understand that we can't mix them, and have a good understanding of that through the simulator work.”