While the writing has been on the wall for some time now, the FIA has formally confirmed what we already knew: It won’t grant Colton Herta an exemption for a tremendous license, which signifies that Herta won’t be part of Red Bull Racing’s junior staff AlphaTauri.
If you’ve missed out on the drama right here, let me sum it up. To race in F1, you want one thing known as an excellent license. To get an excellent license, you want to accumulate 40 factors in a three-year span. You accumulate these by competing in different sequence; your ending place in a sequence dictates the variety of factors you obtain. Herta didn’t have sufficient factors for an excellent license; he solely had 32. However, Red Bull believed it might make a robust case that Herta ought to get the tremendous license anyway.
Still, there have been a couple of caveats and loopholes that might have been executed, had the FIA chosen to go that route. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, 4 years of competitors have been counted towards an excellent license; that would come with Colton Herta’s 2018 Indy Lights season. However, the FIA mandates {that a} sequence subject 10 full-time drivers to be able to qualify for tremendous license factors. That 2018 season solely had eight drivers. The tremendous license laws do, additionally, embody a caveat that the FIA could make exceptions for drivers who’ve displayed expertise or who’ve skilled some type of life-altering occasion that was not their fault.
Red Bull later tried to argue that, discounting ovals, Herta’s IndyAutomotive outcomes would have made him greater than certified to race in F1 — however the FIA wasn’t having any of it.
According to Motorsport.com, a spokesperson for the FIA stated, “The FIA confirms that an enquiry was made via the appropriate channels that led the FIA confirming that the driver Colton Herta does not have the required number of points to be granted an FIA super license.
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“The FIA continuously reviews its regulations and procedures, including with respect to super license eligibility, with the main factors being considered with respect to this topic being safety, experience and performance in the context of the pathway.”
While loads of Americans had been rightfully excited to see the primary F1 driver on the grid since Alexander Rossi in 2015, it appears we’ll have to carry out hope that Formula 2 driver Logan Sargeant will seize an F1 seat within the close to future. With Nicholas Latifi’s departure from Williams, Sargeant might discover himself there sooner relatively than later.
It appeared like AlphaTauri was greater than conscious of its failure yesterday, when it introduced that Yuki Tsunoda can be becoming a member of Pierre Gasly for the 2023 season. However, this transfer additionally reductions Herta from talks with different groups in the intervening time.
Source: jalopnik.com