Louis Foster is staking his claim on the Indy NXT championship.

After a modest start to his sophomore season saw the Briton place third, fifth, and seventh to open the year, rival Jacob Abel from Abel Motorsports took a second and pair of wins to build a solid lead in the Driver’s standings. But since then, the Andretti Global driver has completely dominated the series. Foster’s rookie campaign in 2023 showed his potential, and in 2024, it’s become a one-sided rout for nearly three months.

“I think most of it came down last year to lack of experience, a lot to learn to manage with longer races, using push-to-pass, and a lot more pressure than the Indy Pro 2000 series we won,” Foster told RACER.

“Experience is king, so we took everything from last year into consideration, the learning points, the things that went right, the wrong things, and worked on the problems.”

From the middle of May on the Indianapolis road course, where Foster captured his first win, through the latest race at Iowa, where the 21-year-old scored his first oval victory, Foster has owned NXT with seven consecutive finishes inside the top two, which includes a pair of seconds and five wins.

To fully appreciate Foster’s runaway performances, consider that his five wins so far equal the combined total of victories across the rest of the NXT field. With four races left to run and a commanding lead of 437-360 over Abel in the standings, Foster has distanced himself from the rest of the field by a considerable margin.

“There’s been a few times this year so far that haven’t gone to plan, especially to start the season, but I was never really worried, because with our Andretti team, I knew that we had the strongest pace in the grid,” Foster said. “We just needed to get the consistency going, and now that we have finally been able to do that, it’s been pretty plain sailing.”

Fost has his sights set on jumping to IndyCar next year and found the Dallara DW12 chassis and twin-turbo V6 power he experienced in his first test last year with Andretti to be a perfect fit for his driving style.

“Obviously that’s the goal,” he said. “We’re definitely here in this championship; it’s not done yet, and I’m still 100-percent focused on NXT right now, but we’re talking to IndyCar teams and trying to find any gaps and see what’s available. We’ve been working hard to make sure that I am not only in IndyCar next year, but also ready for it.

“Being with Andretti is an amazing opportunity to learn. After every NXT race, the first thing I’m doing is wandering over the IndyCar team and seeing what they’re doing, chatting to the drivers. And I’m on the pit stand, pretty much every race, on Colton [Herta’s] car, just learning what goes on during IndyCar race, what the team are giving him, what he’s doing.

“We did our test nearly a year ago now with Andretti, and that went really, really well. I felt super comfortable in the car, and honestly, I preferred it to the NXT car. It just felt more natural to me, with a lot more European style of driving. The IndyCar felt like home to me. I understood what to do immediately. I’m used to the downforce, having done a season in Euro Formula Open series, which is a lot of downforce. When I drove the NXT car for the first time, it was powerful, but it still felt relatively slow in the corners, whereas when I did the IndyCar test, it was like, ‘Okay, this is what I’m more used to.’

Up next for Foster and Indy NXT is the oval at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis, and with IndyCar’s silly season at full speed, he needs to pursue his championship ambitions while chasing a seat in the big series.

“It’s very difficult for a driver in my position,” he said. “I don’t have millions of dollars to throw at it. I’ve got the prize money I’m racing after, and I’ve got my talent, and that’s what I can offer. And I’m hoping that’s enough for a team to be able to want me. I’ve got (manager) Stefan Johansson on my side, and he’s a great door opener for me, so I’ve had meetings with a lot of IndyCar teams.

“And my goal is to go to St. Louis and win the race. If we can win St. Louis, we can then start driving for a championship and I would be comfortable having enough of a buffer to start driving for a championship rather than winning races. But I think a lot of times, people get a little bit too carried away with conserving points and letting it get in their heads. I’ve got the best team behind me. We’ve got the car beneath us to be able to go and win more races. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be aiming for that. I don’t want to be settling for seconds and thirds. I think the more points I can grab right now, the better.”