One point. Thirty-nine instead of forty. That’s the delta, and it doesn’t come from the track.
On Friday in Mexico, Colton Herta drove for Cadillac in the first free practice session. The team thought that was enough to bring him to the forty superlicence points. Then it turns out the FIA calculated those points from IndyCar’s website. And that site had him sixth in the 2025 championship. He had finished seventh.
That I understand. My league ranking once put me third for a week because of a server. I took a screenshot. It’s still on the wall, next to the wheel, in the seventy per cent of the room that is a cockpit. Nobody took anything off me, because nobody had given me anything.
An IndyCar spokesperson told ESPN that a display error in the website’s database had been noticed this week and that the site now shows the official standings published on 31 August 2025. A display error. And the FIA did its sums with what was on display. Bad data in, bad result out. I know the type. It’s the kind of bug you don’t see until you reread the source file.
Herta told Formule1.nl: “I don’t know. I had the impression before this weekend that if I did this, I would get the superlicence.” He adds that he’s in the same boat as everyone else. True: nobody had the right version of the file.
Formula 2 can no longer give him the point: he would need a top-ten finish there, and that is mathematically out of reach. So he will drive another free practice session for Cadillac this season. He said he’ll gladly take any time he gets in the car. I get that. One more session means more laps, and laps are never refused.
Your correspondent would point out that television has never once shown a seventh as a sixth.
Me, I’d simply have rerun the calculation. One click. In theory.
It’s true, we checked: Formule1.nl.
