Markham pole sitter Foster was 'driving with a bit of rage'

The first-ever NTT IndyCar Series pole-winner for the new street course at Markham, Louis Foster, admits that anger at his own mistake in Q2 put some extra pep in his step for the Fast Six shootout.

“To be honest with you, I drove Fast Six pretty pissed off because we made a massive mistake in Fast 12,” said Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s series sophomore, who earned his first pole as a rookie at Road America last year. “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 tires to have faded a little bit. I could feel they were still there. Just the heat soak, it cooled down over the five minutes [between Q2 and the Firestone Fast Six], and stiffened them up a little bit.

“But 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 was keen to point out that he wasn’t shocked by the result, noting that the setup on his No. 45 RLL car was the one to have and was emulated with encouraging results by teammates Mick Schumacher and Graham Rahal.

“I think we've been the lead car all weekend,” he said. “We started with a particular setup that Mick and Graham migrated towards. So I had time to adapt to mine.

“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. From the get-go, I felt comfortable with the track. The car was on fire [so]…I felt like Road America last year was a surprise, this one isn't as much as much of a surprise, seeing FP1 and FP2, where we were.”

As echoed by some of his fellow Fast Six contenders, Foster expressed relief that he has the best chance to avoid early-lap chaos in tomorrow’s race, which starts at 12 p.m. ET.

“On a track like this where it's end of the season, people are making more silly moves,” he said, “and it's a street track and it's new, it's dirty offline, there's going to be a yellow. The further back you are, the more likely you are to be caught up in that.

“Clean track in front of me. We've got good pace here and we've got clean track. The target is just to stay in front and drive away.”

On the perils of Turn 10, which has already caught out Will Power, Josef Newgarden and (on approach) Alex Palou today, Foster explained: “That corner's really hard in qualifying spec because you're coming at it at an angle and a bump. It's really difficult.

“I think once we get into the race spec, everything slows down a little bit. That brake zone will become a bit more calm and I don't see as many people making the same mistakes because of how aggressive it is in qualifying spec, especially if fuel-saving comes into consideration. You're coming in a lot calmer.

“I've had brushes with that wall today a few times. It's a nasty wall. But yeah, luckily we didn't hit it. I plan not to hit it tomorrow.”