{"id":180061,"date":"2025-12-12T10:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T10:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/180061\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T10:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T10:45:11","slug":"f1-news-colton-herta-completes-promising-opening-two-days-of-f2-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/180061\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 news: Colton Herta completes promising opening two days of F2 test"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Herta
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tColton Herta has run his first laps in a F2 car at the Abu Dhabi post-season test. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n

Driving for Hitech TGR, Herta\u2019s debut began on Wednesday morning with a 1:39.792 and 32 laps as he worked through initial familiarisation runs. He built on that foundation in the afternoon, adding 51 laps and improving to a 1:39.416.<\/p>\n

Thursday featured a broader mix of run plans across the field, with Herta adding another 36 laps in the morning and lowering his best time to a 1:38.115.<\/p>\n

He closed out the afternoon with 53 further laps, posting a 1:42.263 as Hitech shifted back to long-run, heavy-fuel work to assess tyre behaviour and balance evolution.<\/p>\n

After stepping out of the car on Day 1, Herta said the focus remained firmly on acclimatisation rather than headline pace.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was all about getting comfortable, and I am still pretty far from being super comfortable in the car,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good first steps, it\u2019s such an important three days for us, it\u2019s important to maximise everything that we do here.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fun to be here, fun to be in a car in the offseason, and I am looking forward to the next two days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the opening two days, Herta completed 172 laps, placing him among the busiest drivers in the field.<\/p>\n

His best time ranked 15th overall, just over a second off the benchmark set by MP Motorsport\u2019s Oliver Goethe and four tenths quicker than newly announced Hitech teammate Ritomo Miyata.<\/p>\n

The American will return to the track on Friday for the final day of running at Yas Marina.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colton Herta has run his first laps in a F2 car at the Abu Dhabi post-season test. Image:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5754,5755,70180,114731,111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-180061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-cadillac-f1","9":"tag-colton-herta","10":"tag-f2","11":"tag-hitech-tgr","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}