Formula 1 | Should the FIA ​​award IndyCar more points for the Superlicense?

In the current state of things, and except to chain multiple EL1s, it is unlikely that Colton Herta will reach the 40 points necessary to obtain his Superlicense, and possibly race in F1 next year (at AlphaTauri?).

It must be said that in terms of points scale, IndyCar earns less than F2: 40 points for 1st in IndyCar, 30 for 2nd, 20th for 3rd in the championship, 10th for 4th and up 1 point for 10th.

Is it too little when you know the level of IndyCar? The Herta case at least had the merit of sparking a debate in the paddock.

Helmut Marko has since confirmed for the first time, this morning at Zandvoort, that he was aiming for the American’s arrival in F1 (at AlphaTauri, in place of Pierre Gasly) and would do everything to get him his superlicense .

Does Günther Steiner, boss of an American team, Haas, think that F1 should improve the scale of IndyCar in order to attract more drivers from the USA?

“We can discuss it if we need to modify them. I did not participate in the development of these rules, so I do not know what they were based on, why the point system was chosen as it is now, I do not know and I am open to discuss. »

“I don’t want to sit here and say, Oh, an IndyCar race, we know it’s better than that. You can’t compare too much. Like I said before, if we want to change the rule, let’s discuss it and fix it for the future if you think it’s wrong, but there has to be agreement between the stakeholders. »

Frédéric Vasseur, who was not in favor of making an exception for Herta, is also open to a discussion on the scale.

“Yes, we have already discussed this in the past, when we changed the allocation of points in F3, GP3 and even F2 a few years ago. I think the overall picture of a championship is always changing and shifting. We need to adjust the number of points for each series now, to see if the top five in F2 are better than the top five in IndyCar. »

“I won’t comment on these matters…we have a system that allows us to discuss if we want to change or if someone has a proposal to change the point allocation. »

« Now it’s another matter of whether we should award different points to IndyCar or F3 or F2 and I don’t want to make comparisons, too, because year to year it’s completely different. »

Vasseur had also revealed that he had entered into preliminary talks with Herta, but the question of the Superlicence had put Alfa Romeo off…

Steiner, at Haas, also experienced the same difficulties with Nikita Mazepin, before the Russian finally obtained his Superlicence.

 » Yes «  confirms the boss of Haas, « we had this situation in 2020 with Nikita, when we talked about… at the time, it was not sure that he would finish well enough in the championship, that he would get enough points for the Superlicense and we didn’t do anything, we just told him that if you don’t get the points, you can’t drive in Formula 1. We didn’t do anything else, it was up to him to finish in a position where he would get enough points to get the points and he did in the end. »

Seidl wants to improve IndyCar

Andreas Seidl, the director of the McLaren team in F1, who is him to give his Superlicence to Herta even without a quota reached 40 points, is logically in favor of favoring IndyCar more in the future.

« I’m very much in favor of looking at this and adapting the system, because I think the IndyCar championship is a high quality, very competitive championship with top drivers. »

« So there’s no reason why we can’t make sure the competitive drivers there can’t go straight to Formula 1. »