Otmar Szafnauer has revealed that he talked with Colton Herta about a potential move to the FIA Formula 1 World Championship in a bid to get Scuderia AlphaTauri to release Pierre Gasly from his contract.
When Fernando Alonso opted to leave the BWT Alpine F1 Team to replace the retiring Sebastian Vettel at the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team, Oscar Piastri was expected to join Esteban Ocon at the Enstone-based squad. However, the Australian decided to join the McLaren F1 Team instead, leaving a vacancy at Alpine for the 2023 season.
After being pushed back by AlphaTauri Team Principal Franz Tost, talks with Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko opened Szafnauer’s eyes that Gasly was a possibility should they find a suitable replacement for the Frenchman, and he made contact with Herta and his father Bryan about possibly leaving the NTT IndyCar Series.
Herta was heavily linked with a move to Formula 1 for the 2023 season only to be denied by the lack of a Superlicence, with the seat alongside Yuki Tsunoda ultimately going to Nyck de Vries. But Szafnauer’s talks with Marko eventually led to Gasly joining Alpine.
“I called Franz [Tost] to say can you release him? And Franz said no. And so I said, ‘well, great. I’m glad you said that’,” Szafnauer is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com.
“Because the last thing I wanted to hear was, yeah, I can’t wait to get rid of this guy! He said, no, I need him, he’s a great driver. I don’t want to lose him.
“I said ‘thank you, with all due respect, do you mind if I call Helmut [Marko]? He might have a different perspective’.
“I called Helmut. But at the same time, when I got to certain milestones, I would call [Alpine CEO] Laurent [Rossi] and say, look, this is what I’ve done. This is how far I’ve gotten. I now have to go to America and talk to Bryan Herta about a release [for Colton Herta].
“And I did that bit of it too. I went and had lunch with Bryan and Colton. Because the release was conditional upon Red Bull finding a replacement that they were happy with. Otherwise they wouldn’t have released him.”
