IndyCar star Colton Herta was not allowed by the FIA to race in junior categories last year to boost his Super Licence points tally to enable him to race in F1.
Herta was shortlisted by Red Bull at the end of the season as a potential replacement for Pierre Gasly at AlphaTauri.
However, the Andretti Autosport charger – a seven-time winner in IndyCar who tested for McLaren in F1 last summer - was 8 points short of the 40 points required to qualify for F1's mandatory Super Licence.
Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko lobbied the FIA for an exemption given the 22-year-old's impressive track record in the US, but to no avail, the governing body refusing to grant the young American a free pass.
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It has now come to light that last year the Herta camp approached the Formula Regional series in the US with the hope that Colton Herta could enter the championship and earn himself a surplus of Super Licence points.
US F3 and F4 racing director Scott Goodyear explained on a recent 'Racer to Racer' podcast Herta's predicament and how his attempt to race in the organisation's junior series was blocked by the FIA.
"We offer super licence points to the drivers competing in our series and, if you win the F3/F4/Formula Regional in this country, you’re awarded more points than you are if you win the Indy Lights championship," Goodyear explained.
"It’s interesting because Bryan Herta called me in July. He wanted to see if we could get Colton to run in our F3 series because he needed to gain more super licence points.
“We were approving it, but he couldn’t get clearance from the FIA to be able to run that and be given an opportunity to collect some points."
©McLaren
While the FIA perhaps considered that Herta's presence in the junior series would not be fair for the young guns battling in the championship, Goodyear said that the drivers were very open t the opportunity of measuring themselves against a genuine IndyCar star.
"It was difficult," said Goodyear. "The teams and the drivers in F3 were ecstatic, because they thought somebody of Colton’s calibre was going to come to run in the F3 and [they could] get a real chance to see how their abilities matched up to somebody that’s one of the best drivers."
Herta will undertake this year his fifth full season in IndyCar, but the young American's hopes of joining the grid in F1 in the future aren't over as he is at the top of Michael Andretti's list of prospective drivers to race for Andretti-Cadillac in F1 if the US outfit is granted an entry by the FIA.
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