ouis Foster secured no uncertainty, winning his seventh race of the season and taking the INDY NXT by Firestone title at Milwaukee Mile.
Foster, 21, from Odiham, England, secured the crown for Andretti Global in the INDYCAR development series contest with one race in the schedule remaining. His seventh victory in 2024 was the most wins by a driver in INDY NXT since the current NTT INDYCAR SERIES driver Kyle Kirkwood achieved a record-breaking 10 victories in driving the title last year in 2021 which proved to be the final championship for the Andretti Global.
‘It’s amazing,’ Foster, a second-year driver for the INDY NXT, said. Words can’t express what I am feeling right now, I just want to thank the team, they have been with me the last two years. Big thank you to all the 26 crew, my sponsors. It has been one crazy two years and I could not be happier to end the year like this.
Foster begun from the pole and controlled all the 90 laps in the No. 26 Copart / Novara Technologies car sponsored by Andretti Global and dominated the race wining ahead of Jacob Abel in the No. 51 Abel Construction machine of Abel Motorsports by 4. 3602 seconds. Salvador de Alba Jr. scored third position in the No. 2 Grupo Indi Andretti Cape INDY NXT, a second podium of his rookie season.
Bryce Aron ranked 4th in the No. 27 Jaguar Land Rover Chesterfield car of Andretti Global. Jamie Chadwick was fifth in the No. 28 VEXT machine as Andretti Global and its partner teams placed four drivers among the top five at the end of the race.
Foster had to finish at least in the sixth position to secure the title besides a financial package to help him make a transition to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, not to mention that he never lost sight of the objective from the start of the green flag. The second and 79 points behind Abel started the race did not make it to the second lap after contact within Turn 1 had bumped him to 6th. thus, halting any faint chance that he had of clinching the title.
Abel though was not done from the early trouble he managed to moved up to de Alba for second place with an outside pass in the first turn in the last three laps. He is 93 points behind champion Foster with only the Music City Grand Prix on Sunday, September 15 th in Nashville, Tennessee’s Nashville Superspeedway left in the season.
For Foster, there was hardly any play with these spectacles.
He maintained that margin with a little over one second in front of teammate Chadwick for the first 35 laps of the race, including taking advantage of the only restart of the race, at lap 33. Foster then took that lead to 1 that year and the following year increased that by four points. 5 seconds ahead of de Alba with 30 laps to go.
The only unusual situation which Foster had to avoid was lapped traffic for the last fifteen circuits as previously, the series raced here in 2015. However he weaved through the slower cars brilliantly and sauntered to victory in the last 10 laps.
Collet drove the No. 18 HMD Motorsports but he came through the ninth place, however, it placed third in the championship and made him the series’ rookie of the year given by his performance in the season.
