Colton Herta ran his fifth FP1 session for Cadillac in Mexico thinking he'd finally hit the 40 superlicence points needed for an F1 race seat—only to learn after the session that a calculation error leaves him one point short. The American will get another crack at it, but this outing doubled as an audition against Sergio Perez, his would-be 2027 teammate if he lands Valtteri Bottas's seat.
The gap: 0.970 seconds on mediums, 1.067s on hards. Herta bled most of it at Turn 12, the braking zone into the stadium section, where his minimum speed dropped 13 km/h below Perez's—costing four tenths alone. He's still shedding IndyCar habits, where no power steering rewards aggressive sawing at the wheel. F1 demands precision.
Herta called it "now or never." Cadillac has invested five FP1 sessions and extensive engineering resources. A decision is expected within a month. For the first American with a legitimate shot at a grid slot since the Vegas expansion, the clock is running.
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