Sometimes pure frustration is the best fuel in racing.
After an execution misstep almost knocked him out in the Round of 12, ending up in the final transfer spot by 0.0770s to be exact, Louis Foster channeled his frustration into an unbeatable final run to capture pole position for the inaugural Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham.
Driving the #45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL)Honda, the 23-year-old Briton produced a blistering 1m13.2383s flying lap around the newly constructed 12-turn, 2.19-mile temporary street circuit. The effort placed him a massive 0.3969 seconds ahead of Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard, earning Foster the second IndyCar pole of his career and his first since Road America last season.
The defining turning point came right before the Fast Six shootout, where an error nearly derailed his entire qualifying effort. Upon advancing, he turned the frustration into a positive.
“I drove Fast Six pretty pissed off because we made a massive mistake in Fast 12,” Foster said. “I got through by a bee’s tail, nothing. We should have cleared that easily. I was pretty annoyed. I was driving with a bit of a rage.
“That was damn good as well, to be honest with you. It just clicked. As soon as I did my first couple corners, I was expecting the (used alternates) to have faded a little bit. I could feel they were still there. Just the heat soak, it cooled down over the five minutes, whatever we had, and stiffened them up a little bit.
“It felt good. I had no dramas. The tires didn’t fall off too bad. Like I said, I was expecting less grip than I had. Yeah, pretty much every corner was damn perfect on that lap. There really wasn’t much more in it.”
Foster’s pace was no fluke, as he spearheaded RLLs performance while teammates Graham Rahal and Mick Schumacher qualified 10th and 11th.
“I think we’ve been the lead car all weekend. We started with a particular setup that Mick and Graham migrated towards. So I had time to adapt to mine,” Foster said. “I like this track. It’s fun. I enjoy street circuits. It levels the playing field when we go to new tracks as we see time and time again.”
Unlike his maiden pole a year ago, though, Foster saw this performance coming.
“From the get-go I felt comfortable with the track. Car was on fire,” he said. “It was a pole that I felt like Road America last year was a surprise, this one isn’t as much of a surprise, seeing FP1 and FP2, where we were.”
Looking ahead to race day, Foster holds a strategic tire advantage over Lundgaard and several other rivals.
“We haven’t ran in race trim yet,” Foster said. “We’ll get a better feel for that when we get to warm-up. But yeah, it’s nice to have reds, right? Lundgaard behind me has one less set of new reds. We have to run two new. So we’re already at an advantage.”
With momentum on his side, the second-year driver is set on turning anger into victory.
“We have to optimize everything we’ve got,” Foster said. “That’s something we’ve done good this year, is making sure everything works well. If we have good pit stops, good strategy, good speed, good balance, there’s no reason why we can’t win tomorrow. We have to do what the top teams do every weekend.”
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