McLaren boss Zak Brown says the FIA needs to overhaul its superlicence rules, amid the ongoing saga involving IndyCar driver Colton Herta.
The AlphaTauri team was interested in signing the 22-year-old American, a seven-time race winner in the IndyCar series, but those performances weren’t enough to make him eligible for a licence to race in F1.
A driver needs to accumulate 40 points over a three-year period to qualify for a licence, Herta has 32.
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While the top three finishers in the F2 championship receive 40 points and automatically qualify, fewer points are awarded to drivers in the IndyCar series. Only the series winner each year receives 40 points.
“I think the whole licensing system needs to be reviewed,” Brown said.
“I get that the rules are what the rules are and that rules shouldn’t be broken, but I question whether just because those are the rules that are in place now that those are the correct rules.
“If someone like Colton who’s won a lot of IndyCar races isn’t eligible for a superlicence then I think we need to review the superlicence system.”
Brown pointed out that had the current rules been in place when they first came into F1, world champions Max Verstappen and Kimi Raikkonen wouldn’t have been eligible either.
The FIA could have intervened and granted Herta a licence, but the American says that’s not how he wants the situation to play out.
“I can understand the FIA’s position,” Herta told Motorsport.com. “I just feel that IndyCar is underrepresented in the superlicence points structure.
“But from their point of view, with the current points structure, I get it. And I don’t want to come in as ‘an exception’.”
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