Sensational first IndyCar pole for Foster at Road America

IndyCar rookie Louis Foster scored an incredible breakthrough pole position at Road America last weekend.

The Rahal Letterman Lanigan driver narrowly graduated from his first qualifying group by just 0.056s. In the second section of qualifying he had just one flying lap to make it through to the Fast Six shootout for pole. Under incredible pressure, he delivered the lap.

Then came the best part, as Foster fought against championship leader, Indy 500 winner and three-time champion Alex Palou.

Palou has won three of the last six races at the track, and even had a fresh set of soft tyres for the final segment, whereas Foster only had used tyres.

Despite going up against one of the series’ best, Foster was his match and more, taking pole by a tenth and a half. His average qualifying this year is now 12.89, better than many veterans in the series.

“Obviously a massive thank you to the team,” said Foster, who is backed by Copart, a global leader in online auto auctions.

“They’ve done an amazing job. 

“Yeah, still a little bit in shock.

“The team have been working their asses off, I’ll be honest. We had the crash in Detroit with the suspension failure. Then last weekend at St. Louis. Massive props to the 45 Droplight / Desnuda crew. They needed this to kind of push themselves through the summer stretch. 

“All credit to them because, yeah, they worked endlessly these last two weeks. They’ve rebuilt the car twice.”

A shocked but extremely gracious Palou said “I thought qualifying was going to be only against people on new tyres”, adding: “I think Louis did it on used tires, right? Yeah, I wasn't counting on that. He did an amazing job.”

Foster, driver of the #45 Droplight/Desnuda RLL Honda, also praised the contribution of team leader Graham Rahal.

“I think teamwork is really the key for us at Rahal Letterman Lanigan. 

“As soon as Graham finished his group stage, he jumps out of his car, the first thing he does is runs to me, let’s me know about certain things that he learned in the session. If that’s not teamwork, I don’t know what is. I don’t see any teams or drivers doing that. 

“It’s really a family feeling at RLL. All three of us are super close. I think that really helps us push the program forward.”

In the race Foster impressively held the lead and then remained in the top five for the early running, before repeated cautions forced somewhat of a strategy lottery for the teams and drivers. Ultimately Foster’s car was better on the soft tyres but he only got two stints instead of most of his rivals having three, and he did brilliantly to make late race overtakes to finish 11th.

“We got a few places at the end and took the result from being a pretty average result to a decent one but we averaged our season best result of 11th so I’m not overly disappointed, but I feel like there was more on the table for the Droplight / Desnuda team today,” added Foster.

“We’ve got a lot to dig through with qualifying and how the race played out to analyse and come back even stronger at Mid-Ohio.

“There’s a weekend without racing but we’ll be back at it, finding ways to keep improving our form.”