Juan Manuel Correa, well-placed to offer such an assessment, believes Colton Herta faces a significant cultural adjustment as the former IndyCar driver prepares for his rookie F2 season.
Correa, 26, lines up for the 2026 Indy NXT season with Cusick Morgan Motorsports, a team new to the series but far from inexperienced. Founded in 2021, the outfit previously fielded entries at the Indianapolis 500 in both 2024 and 2025 in partnership with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, and has aligned with HMD Motorsports for technical support as it makes its Indy NXT debut.
Correa himself made nine starts in the series in 2025 with HMD Motorsports, recording a best finish of third on the streets of Detroit. Before that, he accumulated years of experience across F3, F2 and IMSA competition, which makes him uniquely qualified to assess what Herta is walking into.
A different world
Speaking to the media including Pit Debrief, ahead of the new Indy NXT and F2 season, Correa pointed to the tyre transition as an immediate challenge, but suggested the broader shift in environment could prove just as demanding for Herta.
“There’s a lot of challenges for him,” he said. “Obviously, it’s a different car to drive, different tyres. He’ll have to get used to the one-lap qualifying format. He’ll have to get used to the warm-up procedures, to getting a good gauge of when the tyres are ready to be pushed on or not.”
Correa knows the adjustment well. Having raced on Pirelli tyres in F2, where a single flying lap defines qualifying, he found the switch to Firestone tyres required a genuine rethink of his approach.
“It’s Firestone tyres — they’re great,” he said when asked by Pit Debrief about the challenges Herta might face. “They do change the dynamic of the racing; the qualifying is completely different.”
“It took some getting used to for me, actually, because with the Pirellis, we’re used to having one lap worth of life in the tyres with a big peak, whereas here in qualifying, you’ll have three, four, five good attempts at getting a lap, which sounds easier, but actually it just means the whole field is more tightly packed together, in my opinion, because everybody, if you make a mistake one lap, you can correct it for the next one.”
Racing against experts
On race pace, Correa expects Herta to adapt more comfortably, given the demands IndyCar already places on its drivers. “I don’t anticipate that he’s going to struggle much in race pace. IndyCar with the soft tyres, they do have to manage their tyres a lot more than we do in Indy NXT, but I just think the whole difference in culture is going to be a bit of a shock for him.”
He also warned that Herta’s rivals’ deep circuit knowledge should not be underestimated. “He’ll also be racing against guys that have been driving those tracks their whole life, and they’re specialists at a lot of the circuits, and he’ll have to adapt to that. So I wish him the best of luck, but for sure it’ll be a challenge for him, I think.”
As for his own ambitions in 2026, Correa speaks with measured but clear-eyed conviction. “A good season would be to win some races and to consistently be fighting in the top five and be a contender. There are a lot of factors on whether we will be a championship contender by the end of the year, and a lot of those will be under our control. We just have to take it one weekend at a time and build the momentum throughout the year.”
