Formula 2 will join Formula 1’s support bill for the 2026 Miami and Montreal Grands Prix, replacing its two cancelled rounds in the Middle East and inadvertently closing off the possibility of Colton Herta making an Indy 500 cameo.
F1 elected not to replace its cancelled Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GP races in April as it still has a 22-race schedule and has few other gaps to slot additional races into anyway.
But F1’s primary feeder series F2 has moved to fill the loss of two rounds from its 14-round schedule, adding weekends at Miami (May 3) and Montreal (May 24) to replace the Bahrain and Saudi weekends.
It does now mean that Cadillac F1 test driver Herta, who left his frontrunning IndyCar career behind to race in F2 this year in preparation for a potential F1 switch, can’t race at the Indy 500 because of the Montreal clash.
He looked likely to rejoin the Andretti team in a fourth entry at the 500 alongside the team's three regular 2026 drivers, Marcus Ericsson, points leader Kyle Kirkwood and Will Power.
But with Herta fully focussed on making his F2 switch work, he’ll be racing in Montreal on the same weekend as the Indy 500. Andretti may end up just running three cars, but there will be outside interest in the fourth seat, and the event always tries to help fill its 33-car grid.
It’s the first time this iteration of F2 has raced in North America.
Bruno Michel, FIA Formula 2 CEO, said: “I would like to thank Stefano Domenicali and Formula 1 for their support in making this possible, and also the FIA, the promoters of the Miami and Canadian Grands Prix, and of course my team, who have worked hard to put in place two new Rounds in such a short amount of time.
“It was not an easy thing to do, but bringing F2 to North America for the first time is really fantastic.”
from The Race https://ift.tt/EvN2AuW
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