Photo: Chris Jones
Andretti Global’s Louis Foster says focusing on tyre management from the start underpinned his Indy Nxt victory at Iowa Speedway.
He was one of several drivers suffering with tyre blistering in practice, and Indy Nxt responded to tyre durability concerns by shortening its first oval race of 2024 from 75 to 55 laps.
Foster missed out on pole to team-mate James Roe Jr by 0.0054 seconds, then sat behind him for most of the race before making a decisive pass for his fifth victory of the season and first oval win of his career.
“Being up front gives us an advantage of being able to look after [the tyres],” he said. “From the get-go, we were focusing on saving tyres. I was managing my gap between James and [Christian] Bogle behind. I didn’t want Bogle to get too close, but I didn’t want to be too close behind James.
“Then at the end, because we did that, we had enough tyre to go around the outside of him. Maybe he was struggling more than I was, but the car was absolutely on rails and I had the confidence just to send it around the outside.”
Since his two main title rivals retired, Foster’s championship lead grew to 77 points. He said the gap “makes me sleep better at night”. Returning to the topic of tyres, he added:
“This weekend, it was a big concern of ours. But then at the end, the car was super in the window and they were fresh as anything my tyres, so I was good to go. And I knew I had to pace to try around the outside, so I gave it a go. And to be fair to James, he gave me respectful room. It was a good overtake, we had a great car. So a big thank you to Andretti.”
The shorter race distance meant Foster felt “we knew what the tyres were going to be like”, having had concerns about the planned 75-lap duration.
“Us at the front, the first 15 laps, we could have easily been flat. But we weren’t. We were specifically saving our tyres. So I think if there was anyone on the field who really struggled with their tyres, I would kind of blame it up to them not managing them well enough. Because we knew what it was going to be like. It wasn’t a surprise.”
Foster praised Andretti’s “really good run plan” that enabled him “to keep a good car to the end”, believing that contributed to the one-two finish and Salvador de Alba (who is co-run by Andretti and Cape Motorsports) finishing third.
Formula Scout asked Foster if he had encountered understeer, since it inflicted title rival Caio Collet and contributed to the HMD Motorsports driver crashing early on.
“No, because we managed it quite well,” Foster replied. “I backed off enough from James and was doing slow enough laps where I was saving tyres, pretty much the entire race until the last six, seven laps.”