Photo: James Black
Louis Foster has won Indy Nxt’s last two races to close in on points leader Jacob Abel, but he anticipates Caio Collet will be the driver to beat going forward.
Andretti Global driver Foster sits 25 points behind Abel Motorsports’ Abel after five races, with HMD Motorsports’ Collet a further 47 behind.
Collet led the most laps in the race on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course, but it was Foster who won, then last weekend Foster led home Collet in Detroit.
“I think Caio was the only person who could challenge us for the win today. But Andretti gave me a great car to be able to manage the pace and manage the gap,” said Foster after victory.
“If he got too close I’d push a bit more. If he backed off a bit, then I would back up as well. So I wasn’t too worried about [him].”
Abel finished fifth, and HMD’s Nolan Siegel dropped from second to third in the standings after car issues meant he started the race several laps down.
Foster admitted that “if Caio had gone for something, I would have been more inclined to just let him go” than if it had been main rival Abel behind him attempting an overtake.
“But all saying that, I do believe that Caio is going be the guy to beat for the rest of the year,” he added. “That race, he was very fast. I expect him to be up there a lot more against me, Jacob and Nolan.”
Given the Detroit street circuit has a layout of low-speed corners and lots of bumps, Formula Scout asked Foster how relevant the results were and how applicable lessons learned would be for the rest of the season on higher speed tracks.
“Firstly, what we can take from this race? Some things. We don’t have any more street races this year, so that’s one thing that doesn’t necessarily help. But we’re all at a point now where it doesn’t matter what circuit you’re going to, you’re still looking for the optimum in the car.
“The next track, Road America, is completely opposite to this track in a way. So we just take forward what, the things we’ve learned maybe about the tyres and other stuff, more in-detail stuff that I won’t go into. But, I mean I don’t see any reason why we can’t move this momentum forward into the next round.”
Indy Nxt used to race on Detroit’s very different Belle Isle street circuit, switching last year to the current downtown track.
“It’s quite a difficult track to drive on and very difficult to overtake. But it also gives a lot of good racing, I think,” said Foster.
“I mean you can see the IndyCar race now. And In our race, there was cautions, there was incidents. So it’s very hard to drive and it’s borderline too aggressive, but I think for our cars, as long as you can hustle the bumps, it’s fine.”