Rookie Louis Foster experiences his first IndyCar blues with unusual issue at Thermal

Louis Foster got his first taste of the hyper-competitive IndyCar world at the inaugural Thermal Club Grand Prix on March 23. The race was technically his IndyCar debut. The British driver's outing at the season opener at St. Petersburg on March 2 ended in Turn 3 of Lap 1 after he got collected in a pile-up.

Foster impressed at the Thermal Club by successfully acing Round 1 of qualifying. He went fifth-fastest in Group 2 and was the only Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver out of three to qualify for Round 2. Experienced teammate Graham Rahal got knocked out in P9 in Round 1 while Devlin DeFrancesco was further down in P13.

Though he couldn't get past Round 2 and into the Firestone Fast 6, he started P10 on the grid. However, it all went downhill in the race as Louis Foster dropped to P24 by the end, partially owing to an issue with his No. 45 Honda.

"It’s a disappointing result for us," he said in a statement on his website. "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."

The Briton explained how his seat had an issue, putting him in a lot of pain as the race progressed:

"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 2024 Indy NXT champion left the 3.067-mile circuit with six points, which when added to the five he earned in St. Petersburg, places him dead last in the championship standings with 11 points.

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Louis Foster happy to put "bittersweet" Thermal Club race behind him

Louis Foster's No. 45 RLL Honda at IndyCar's Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg - Day 1 - Source: Getty

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has shown respectable gains in pace in the first two races of the 2025 IndyCar season. Graham Rahal has overcome bad qualifying sessions on both weekends to finish near the Top 10, P12 at St. Pete and P11 at Thermal Club. Louis Foster could've scored similar results if not for consecutive misfortunes.

The Briton looked at the bright side of finishing his first full race under the scorching sun in Thermal.

"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," the 21-year-old said via his website.

Louis Foster is arguably the most promising IndyCar rookie this year. He dominantly won the 2024 Indy NXT championship with eight wins in 14 races and stood on the podium four more times.