Foster flies to his first Indy Nxt pole of 2024 with record Detroit pace

Photo: Joe Skibinski

Louis Foster took his first pole position of the Indy Nxt season in Detroit, and will share the front row with championship leader Jacob Abel.

Andretti Global driver Foster was quickest in the second qualifying group, and both groups had their sessions disrupted by red flags.

Group two had been running smoothly until the final minutes. Foster had jumped to the top of the times early on, becoming the first driver in qualifying to complete a sub-1m06s lap around the downtown street circuit. He then improved to 1m05.1079s, a laptime which would earn him pole.

HMD Motorsports’ Myles Rowe jumped up to second place, only to then hit the barriers with the rear of his car at turn one. The incident brought out red flags and ended Rowe’s day. His fastest lap was deleted and he dropped to the bottom of the order.

The session resumed with time for just one flying lap remaining. Only a few were able to improve, and Foster did not go out for a final run. Caio Collet jumped up the order to go second fastest, 0.387s off Foster and a tenth of a second quicker than Andretti Cape’s Michael d’Orlando.

In group one, the fastest lap had changed hands between Abel Motorsports driver Abel and Andretti Global’s James Roe Jr. Abel was on top by less than a tenth of a second when Roe hit the wall at turn one. 

The session was red flagged and turned green again with less than three minutes on the clock. 

As in group two, there was little change after the red flag, though an improvement from Jack William Miller lifted him up to fourth fastest in the group and therefore eighth on the grid.

Abel will start second due to Foster beating his benchmark laptime, with Collet in fourth and Jamie Chadwick in sixth alongside d’Orlando and HMD’s Hedge.

Nolan Siegel starts seventh, with Miller, Yuven Sundaramoorthy and Roe completing the top 10.

Qualifying results