Photo: Penske Entertainment / Joe Skibinski
Louis Foster dominated Indy Nxt’s first qualifying session on the streets of Downtown Detroit, then hit the wall in the second one. But he still took pole.
The Andretti Autosport driver stunned to not only take pole for race one by 0.6458 seconds in Q1, with that same gap in pace covering second to ninth, but then set the pace in Q2 despite making contact with the barriers.
Detroit’s bumpy street circuit made car handling unpredictable at times, with uneven grip across the four wheels due to some occasionally leaving the ground, and the rear-end of Foster’s car snapped out as he exited the final corner of the lap and swung into the barriers.
The outcome was a damaged toe link in the rear-left suspension, and then in the next laps a pace improvement of 0.7941 seconds to secure race two pole by 0.1906s.
“Well, the first one was a good session. Obviously put it on pole, so can’t complain too much,” said Foster afterwards.
“It was pretty easy-going, I think just hit our marks. I was pretty confident going into this weekend, I’m used to turning up to new circuits. For the last two years I’ve turned up to brand new circuits and had to qualify pretty quickly. So I knew this would suit me this weekend, so just got to follow through with a race win in race one.”
On his Q2 brush with the barriers, he added: “Yeah, I tapped the wall on the exit of the last corner with like four laps to go. So I was like sideways down the straight with the steering. And bit of a shoutout to Ollie Bearman.
“I don’t know if anybody here watches F2, but he did it in Baku a few weeks ago with the bent steering. So in the car I was like ‘oh, I’ve got to do that as well, I have to’.
“I mean obviously not particularly amazing to [hit the wall], not a great thing to happen in qualifying. But we made it work, the team’s done an amazing job, the car’s been mint, the guys and the engineers have worked insanely hard to come to this weekend with a great car, and we had no information, really.
“So I can’t thank them enough at Andretti. I’ve just got to hopefully win the race now.”
Reigning USF Pro 2000 champion Foster sits sixth in the Indy Nxt standings with a best finish of second achieved last time out on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course, but he already has three pole positions from five attempts.
“I think we’ve had some unlucky weekends, but definitely this is the start of our uphill battle into the front of the championship,” he affirmed.