Spectacular Foster qualifies 10th on Thermal debut

Rahal Letterman Lanigan driver Louis Foster excelled on his first visit to the Thermal Club, delivering a 10th-place qualifying in just his second NTT INDYCAR Series event.

Foster, 21, was taken out on the first lap of the season opener at St Petersburg having delivered another impressive qualifying on his debut, starting 16th, but he couldn’t even complete a lap.

At least he had driven at St Pete before, with the California Thermal circuit throwing up a number of uncommon challenges over the course of a weekend.

Foster graduated from the first session of qualifying making it to the Fast 12 where he ended up 10th and the highest qualifying RLL car.

“The team has done an amazing job,” said Foster, who is backed by Copart, a global leader in online auto auctions.

“They have brought me up to speed really fast. The 45 car rolled off the truck super-fast. It’s just kind of been building each session.

“Getting into the Fast Six would have been difficult because we didn’t have new soft tyres; we used two sets of new soft tyres in the first round. So we just had a discussion about saving a set in the future when we think we’re going to be strong.

“I’m super happy. It’s been an amazing weekend so far and hopefully we can make it past Turn 3 on the start this weekend.”

Foster was able to make it past Turn 3, and had a strong first stint before his soft tyres began to wear rapidly at the end of the first stint.

He made a lot of that time back up in the second stint, before an issue in the car hampered his progress and left him lucky to finish at all, in 24th place.

“It’s a disappointing result for us,” added Foster.

“We had good pace in the car in warm-up but the first stint we struggled a little bit with tyre degradation on the soft tyres.

“We lost a bit of time in the first stint because of that, but we gained it back in the second stint and made some overtakes and were looking good.

“And then, just with it being my first full race, we had some issues with the seat with my shoulder so I was driving in a lot of pain, just struggling to honestly finish the race at that point.

“We need to look over the seat and the belt and understand what exactly was the cause of that pain.

"The positives are we’ve got the pace, we just need to try and get myself more used to INDYCAR racing. It was a bit of a bittersweet weekend but you know what, my first race in INDYCAR is behind me so I’m pretty happy to get that one done.”

Foster has a short break before returning to action at another new track to him and one of the most anticipated on the calendar, the Grand Prix of Long Beach, on April 13.