Colton Herta isn’t going to try to race in both Formula 2’s feature race in Montreal and the Indy 500 on the same day in May.

Herta, 26, left IndyCar at the end of last season and joined Cadillac as its Formula 1 test driver and is racing for Hitech in F2 this year. Originally, the F2 calendar would have allowed Herta to compete in the Indy 500, given there previously was a break in May for the junior category. F2 was set to race in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia this month and not be on track again until Monaco in June, but the Middle East conflict led to both April races being canceled.

F2 announced on April 9 that Rounds 2 and 3 would take place at Miami and Montreal next month, marking the first time the series has competed in North America. Once those race weekends were confirmed, Herta knew he wouldn’t be able to compete in both races.

“I had visions in my head of being able to do that, but I kind of always knew it wasn’t going to be able to be done legitimately,” Herta told select media, including The Athletic on Friday. “As far as the Indy side, you miss Carb Day, which is a very important day. And then even if it were to work, it’s difficult because F2 is a clear priority, and Cadillac is the clear priority for me this year.

“That was just going to kind of be a little bit of an added bonus when I had a bit of time off, but yeah, it wasn’t meant to be this year.”

Herta is IndyCar’s youngest race winner and polesitter, and during his time in the American championship, he secured nine victories and 16 poles.

Some drivers over the years have tried to compete in both the Indy 500 and their respective categories on the same day — NASCAR’s Kyle Larson recently tried to do so twice — but it is a grueling and tricky feat to conquer, and it’s one that doesn’t exactly serve Herta’s current career path.

When asked if he’d consider looking at competing in a different IndyCar race, Herta said, “I would love to do an IndyCar race, but realistically, it’s probably not going to help anything that I’m doing full time so it won’t happen. Or I would probably say I wouldn’t do it, because it would, it might hurt.”

Herta is focused on Cadillac and F2 this season, and he’s already scored points, after finishing seventh in the feature race at Australia. Now he’s taking another step forward  with Cadillac announcing Friday he’d participate in four FP1 sessions this season, starting with Barcelona.

Herta said he hasn’t done sim work for F1 since the season began, but he expects the program to ramp up soon.

“Colton is a top talent, which he has not only proved by building an impressive resume in the NTT IndyCar Series before joining us, but also with a strong start to his Formula 2 season,” Cadillac team principal Graeme Lowdon said in the team announcement. “Completing all four of our young driver FP1 sessions is a natural next step in his Test Driver role, and I look forward to seeing what he can bring in terms of development and focus.”

Herta feels that doing IndyCar while in F2 “wouldn’t be a distraction” given how vastly different the two racing series are, such as driving an F2 car on a permanent or street track versus conquering an IndyCar oval. The biggest difference to him has been how different the driving styles are.

“The Indy car, you make lap time out of it, and you can be very forceful with your inputs, with your feet and your hands, whereas F2, you have to massage it a little bit more,” Herta explained. “You have to be a little bit more delicate with it, and the way you get lap time out of the two are not similar. So I think there’s been a little bit of a learning curve with that.”

One of the biggest areas he’s seen himself grow the most — but still isn’t “exactly where I want to be at with it” yet — is “understanding the tire and how it likes to be worked.” In F2, there are pit stops and changing of tire compounds. He said, “When I first got into the car, it was quite difficult to maximize lap time out of it, and I was looking for lap time in probably wrong places.”