Colton Herta is back in a Cadillac this weekend. The test driver takes over Valtteri Bottas's MAC-26 for opening practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix — his second FP1 session of the year — and the arrangement has become one of 2026's more closely watched storylines at F1's newest team.
Herta is combining the outing with a Formula 2 campaign at Hitech, which Cadillac backs. His first taste of a race weekend came in Sergio Perez's car in Barcelona, and he was quick to describe Friday in Budapest as a data-gathering exercise, not a trial for a race seat.
"It's very exciting to get another chance in FP1," Herta said. "It's a good opportunity for my personal experience, but the ultimate goal is, of course, to help the team with its development. It's been six weeks since I was last in the car, and there's been a lot of evolution in that time."
He laid out the assignment plainly. "My job is to help the race drivers have the best possible Hungarian Grand Prix — but also provide the feedback that will aid the team in its long-term development aims and give me a better baseline in future sessions."
Inevitably, each run stirs the same theory — that Herta is being groomed to take Bottas's seat. The Finn, a 10-time race winner on a multi-year deal, isn't biting. Asked what the rumours were really about, he kept it short.
"Headline and clicks, that's my theory," Bottas told media including Crash.net. The speculation, he said, changes nothing for him: "I know my situation, the team knows my situation and they support me 100 percent."
Team principal Graeme Lowdon put it even more firmly. "There is no foundation of truth in any of the rumours at all," he said. "I'll make it really, really clear factually, they're completely incorrect. There's no basis of truth whatsoever in any of them."
He also flagged the regulation that kills the theory on the spot: Herta simply doesn't have the superlicence points to line up in a race yet. "Colton doesn't have any super license points, and to some extent, that probably says it all about the quality of some of the rumours," Lowdon said. A 2027 seat would require Herta to close out his F2 season inside the top eight.
His larger point is about what a brand-new team demands of its drivers. "With all due respect, the outside world doesn't know what we're asking these drivers to do," Lowdon said, adding that Bottas and Perez are "doing way more than drivers in some other teams" while the outfit is assembled around them in real time.
So the division of labour stays as it is for now — Herta logs the Friday mileage, Bottas and Perez do the racing. Nothing about Budapest looks likely to change that before the summer shutdown.
