Red Bull's Christian Horner says American F1 champ is coming. Who, when, how is uncertain.

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – With six IndyCar victories before turning 22, Colton Herta’s left no doubt who the best young American single-seater driver is.

And yet, unless you knew about the California native’s testing plans with the McLaren F1 team later this year and that the team embedded Herta in their driver and engineering meetings this weekend, you  wouldn't have had a clue. Herta’s presence as the hottest American formula car driver under the age of 30 was all-but invisible at F1’s inaugural Miami Grand Prix.

It took nearly the full two hours of driver news conferences Friday, with each group of five asked why none among them could call maybe F1’s most-hyped race of 2022 their home grand prix, before Herta’s name was mentioned. More than an hour prior, Williams driver Alex Albon talked up the potential of Logan Sargeant, a 21-year-old American driver who recently joined the Williams Driver Academy.

When Herta finally did come up, Norris did so almost in jest – mentioning his old teammate, whom he fondly called ‘Hooligan Herta’ during their 2015 season as Carlin teammates in the MSA Formula Championship series.

Thursday, Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner was asked multiple times about the potential for a new American driver on F1’s 20-driver grid to help further ignite F1’s momentum. He jokingly brought up 1978 F1 champ Mario Andretti and conveniently reminded those within earshot that his team is invested in the matter. Red Bull’s ‘Junior Team’ lists Charlotte-native Jak Crawford on its roster. Crawford just turned 17  and is currently running in Formula 3 fresh off a two-podium weekend at Imola last month.

So why is IndyCar’s youngest-ever race-winner, who started last year’s Indy 500 on the front row at 21 and who could become the youngest winner of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing later this month an after-thought when it comes to picking America’s next great F1 driver? Why has it been nearly seven years since Alexander Rossi made his last F1 start? And why have only two drivers competed in the series from the world’s racing hotbed since Michael Andretti’s single F1 season nearly three decades ago?

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Culture. Money. Sacrifice. Luck. IndyCar.

“It doesn’t really surprise me,” seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton said Friday. “Here in the states, it’s the NFL. It’s the NBA. It’s NASCAR, IndyCar. In my 16 years of coming over here, it’s been such a slow build, trying to bring awareness to (F1).

“But maybe now’s the time to start focusing on how we can include more people here, because it’s such a diverse country. I’m sure there’s some amazing drivers here somewhere, as they’ve got so many great sporting talents. It would be a good mission for us to find the next one.”

Does F1 really have the 20 best drivers?

During a weekend in which the U.S.’s newfound F1 fandom was on full display with the country’s new race -- which will be one of three American grand prixes by 2023 -- it seemed a bit of a touchy subject for some.

The phrase “follow the money” may have no better fit than the racing series that announced days ago it paid $240 million for a plot of land on the Las Vegas Strip to build its paddock for next year’s debut of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Netflix’s F1 behind-the-scenes show ‘Drive to Survive’ has helped grow U.S. fan interest at a rapid pace. American companies can’t spent their marketing dollars in the sport fast enough. But F1’s current driver pool made clear this weekend that the series’ 10 teams shouldn’t go searching to turn a quick buck on the back of a young American driver without the proper pedigree.

“We shouldn’t have a driver on the grid just because of their nationality. We should have the best drivers earning their right to be here and proving themselves when they’re here,” Mercedes driver George Russell said. “We don’t live in a perfect world, but this is the pinnacle, and it needs to stay like that. We have the best engineers. We have the best everything here. We go to the best places, and that needs to filter down to the drivers as well.”

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The insinuation, of course, is that Formula 1 hosts the 20 best drivers in the world, that the cream rises to the top when this much money is on the line every weekend. “I think this is the highest form of competitive racing in the world,” said Miami Grand Prix managing partner Tom Garfinkel. “It doesn’t matter where those drivers come from. If America can produce one of the 20 best drivers in the world in these machines, then that would be fantastic. But I think it’s more important you have the 20 best drivers in the world in these cars than where they come from necessarily.”

But does F1 really have the 20 best drivers in the world in its high-tech machinery? This year’s lone rookie, Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu, took 3rd-place in the 2021 Formula 2 championship – considered to be, largely, the only ladder into the series. Oscar Piastri (2021 F2 champ) and Robert Schwartzman (runner-up) remain on the sidelines in test or reserve driver roles with established teams, waiting for a possible call-up this offseason.

In 2020, with F2 champ Mick Schumacher landing a ride at Haas, current IndyCar rookie Callum Ilott (the 2020 F2 runner-up) was leapfrogged by two competitors that he bested over the entire season: 3rd-place Yuki Tsunoda and 5th-place Nikita Mazepin. Zhou took 6th that year and now also has a seat.

Because, as is the case in all forms of motorsport, very rarely can you get to where you want to be purely on talent alone. More often than not, it takes a backer behind you – sometimes several, often with deep pockets – or being associated with the right people. Piastri was part of Alpine’s driver academy, but the F1 team simply has no holes to fill at the moment. Ilott and Schwartzman were part of the same with Ferrari, which  has its own two-driver tandem locked down for several years. Even when openings cropped up at teams Alfa Romeo and Haas this offseason, both went in other directions.

As several drivers and team principals explained this weekend at the Miami GP, the likely culprit for such a drought in American talent is the journey they’re all but forced to embark upon from an extremely young age to even be considered – at a time when other more deserving candidates are being left by the wayside.

'Pressure is a privilege'

Herta tried to “play the game” the proper way. At 14 years old, he traveled across the world to live by himself and work his way up the European junior formula system, starting with a Formula 4 ride with Carlin. When 3rd-place in the series in 2015 didn’t drum up enough additional funding to jump into Formula 3 or GP3, he entered smaller championships with similar cars and did what he could, placing 3rd in the Euroformula Open Championship and 2nd in Spanish F3.

By the end of 2016, Herta was back home preparing for his first of two Indy Lights seasons. Norris, on the other hand, won the 2015 MSA Formula title, the 2016 Toyota Racing Series championship and would go on to take 1st in F3 in 2017. By 2019 at just 19 years old, he was racing for McLaren.

“It’s very natural, I would say, to go back to the U.S. because there’s so many great things. Racing is very popular over here,” Russell said.

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And yet, Herta says he understands. There are no hard feelings. He remembers his time in Europe fondly, and he credits several of the lessons he learned in less than two years there with helping transform him into one of IndyCar’s most promising stars. But because he couldn’t muster up the money, he knew he was giving up his best shot at a possible future in F1 the moment he headed back to California. The testing opportunity he has with McLaren later this year should be seen as the exception – largely due to Zak Brown and McLaren’s role with Arrow McLaren SP in IndyCar and Brown’s familiarity with American open-wheel racing.

“All the team principals, they see the (European junior formula) drivers all the time ... and they’re seeing who has success and who doesn’t,” Herta told IndyStar. “Your face just gets recognized more. And I would agree an American driver shouldn’t get a ride just because he’s an American, because you should have to be good enough.

“But IndyCar is incredibly competitive also – as competitive as any junior formula series over in Europe, so you should be able to make the jump. But it’s almost out of (team principals’) way to have to (consider IndyCar drivers) because they’ve got plenty of good drivers in Europe."

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And as Herta and others explained, F1 team principals also know what they’re evaluating in the talent in F2 and F3. They’re nowhere near as familiar with the tracks, cars, tires and competition in Indy Lights or IndyCar. For example, F1 hopefuls Herta and O’Ward duked it out for the 2018 Lights title, but only seven drivers ran full-time in that series. Their fellow competitors have nothing to do with how good Herta and O’Ward are, but for an outsider, it would be easy to look at that lack of grid depth and ignore it.

Before F1 unveiled its “Testing of a previous Car” program -- which McLaren will utilize with Herta later this year -- there just wasn’t enough testing time for teams to invest the amount of money required for a driver they haven’t seen prove themselves on the tracks and in the equipment an F1 driver would be racing. With TPC, Herta will get to run an unannounced number of days in last year’s McLaren F1 car because of how stark the regulation changes were this offseason. It will allow Brown and McLaren team principal Andreas Seidel to evaluate Herta in a modern-day car against what their own drivers did just a year ago.

Without it, teams only get six test days at two tracks over the course of an offseason.

“I think (1995 CART champ Jacques Villeneuve) had 20,000 miles of testing,” Brown said of the driver who jumped to F1 after two seasons in CART in the mid-90s. Only two drivers – neither American – have jumped from American open-wheel racing to F1 since, Juan Pablo Montoya and Sebastien Bourdais.

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At the moment, F1 has three drivers from North America but each attested this weekend to the very early decision they and their families were forced to make to send them to Europe.

“It’s definitely harder for us, because you have to go to Europe at a very young age,” said Red Bull’s Mexican driver Sergio Perez. “I think they have a lot of talent (in the U.S.), and hopefully soon, we can have an American-based driver, because I think it will be good for the sport.

Canadian Nicholas Latifi, who currently drives for Williams, acknowledged that it’s not solely an ‘American’ or even ‘North American’ problem. Only 13 of the 20 drivers on the current F1 grid hail from Europe, with Australia (Daniel Ricciardo), Japan (Tsunoda), China (Guanyu) and Thailand (Albon) also represented with Canada and Mexico.

“It’s a big commitment, a big sacrifice. You move away from your family and friends and your home from a very, very young age, and on the weekends, most of the other drivers are able to take an hour or two-hour flight home to see their family and friends in the off-time,” Latifi said. “That obviously wasn’t a luxury for me, or for Sergio or (Canadian Lance Stroll) or Daniel.

“It was something I was very happy to do to pursue my passion. I’m sure if they want to make that step, it’s something they’ll be happy to do, because obviously this is the pinnacle."

Sargeant grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, just miles from the Miami GP track, and though F2 wasn’t racing this weekend, he was on-hand to take in the scene. So much of that, he said, is envisioning how close he is to breaking the long-held barrier – and yet how tough a road he still has ahead. He joined Carlin’s F2 program this year after three seasons in F3 where won three times, stood on 10 podiums and finished 3rd in the championship in 2020. Through three race weekends this year (which include a sprint race and a feature race) he’s taken 6th twice (sprints in Bahrain and Imola) and 7th twice (the features at both aforementioned tracks). He sits 11th in points.

“Being in Formula 2 now, the path is there. It just comes down to performance,” Sargeant told a group of media Friday. “You know you can always come back to America. It’s just a sacrifice at this point, but at the end of the day, I feel like it’s the best chance to make it to F1.

“Pressure is a privilege.”

Is Andretti Global the solution?

Horner said Thursday that he expects to see an American World Drivers Champion in the future – of which there have only been two, the most recent Mario Andretti in 1978. “It’s just a question of when,” he said.

Part of Michael Andretti’s quest to break into F1 is to also start a program in the lower formula levels. There he could target young American drivers and possibly scope out proper sponsorship with his famous family name that would help those who follow in Herta’s footsteps not to have to give up on their F1 dreams so quickly. Because even though Brown shot down the notion that American drivers aren’t deserving or aren’t on a level playing field – “If that’s people’s perception, I think that’s the wrong reality. It’s just about being in the right place, the right time and in the right series,” he said – Andretti isn’t so sure.

More on Andretti Global:

• Andrettii says decision on Andretti Global may take until September
• Michael Andretti on possible F1 team: We're here because it's our life'
• Andretti Global would build new F1 team's cars in Indianapolis, says Mario

Perhaps his own controversial (and short) history with the sport colors his perception, but with him he says, a prospective American F1 driver would get a proper shot.

“We want to be able to bring kids out of go-karts, and if they’re good enough, they’ll hopefully get to F1, and we’ll have the team to do it,” he told IndyStar Friday. “We would know they’re getting a legitimate shot.

“There’s not going to be anyone out there with a full load of fuel and not know it. It’s going to be a legitimate deal.”

Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown at nlbrown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.