Dominant feeder series champion gets best 2025 IndyCar seat left

Rahal Letterman Lanigan has signed domineering Indy NXT champion Louis Foster to a full-time IndyCar deal for 2025.

The move is somewhat of a surprise as Foster hasn’t regularly been linked with RLL in the off-season, but the team has been impressed by Foster’s 2024 IndyCar feeder series title win with Andretti Global, signing him to a long-term agreement.

Foster became one of the few recent champions alongside the likes of Pato O’Ward and Kyle Kirkwood to bag eight wins in an Indy NXT season. He also notched seven poles, only finished outside of the top three twice in 14 races and won the championship with a race to spare.

“I am really looking forward to working with the team. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing have Indy 500 victories, obviously Bobby has won an Indy 500 and there is a great wealth of knowledge with the team," Foster said.

"I’m hoping that coming off the experience gained from winning the Indy NXT championship, that will leave me in a good stance to get the ball rolling. This is where the hard work starts. We will start the preparations and make sure we get hit the ground running in St. Pete.”

Foster, 21, moved to the States for 2022 and promptly won the Indy Pro 2000 championship at the first time of asking alongside winning his maiden oval race, and he’d go on to score a first street race win later that season too.

A race-winning campaign in Indy NXT was dogged by car issues and a few rookie errors from Foster, which he corrected this season.

In the end, he finished 122 points clear of his nearest challenger, well over two race wins, and scored 100 more points than the previous year's champion.

“We are very pleased that we have been able to come to an agreement with Louis to have him drive for the team for the next several years," team co-owner Bobby Rahal said.

"We look at this as a long-term relationship that will go beyond the existing terms and are very excited to get started on preparations for the 2025 season and his series debut.”

Fellow co-owner Mike Lanigan said "he reminds me of another driver - the late, great Justin Wilson".

Graham Rahal signed a contract extension at the end of last season, so the only doubt remains over who will join him and Foster in the team.

Pietro Fittipaldi’s place has been under threat according to reports, although the sponsorship he is able to bring helps offset costs and he is still the most likely driver for the seat according to The Race's sources.

Race winner Rinus VeeKay and 2024 rookie of the season Linus Lundqvist would be brilliant additions but don’t bring that significant budget.

Neither does ex-Red Bull Formula 1 junior Juri Vips, who is under contract with the team as its reserve driver but doesn’t appear to be top of its list currently.

The team won a race as recently as 2023 with Christian Lundgaard - who's joined McLaren - but it has struggled to find and keep enough engineers to keep up with the hiring the top teams have been doing in recent years. Its oval form especially has been poor of late while it remains a challenger on certain road and street courses.

Lundgaard was its best finisher this year in 11th, and was 8th the year before.

It has also been embroiled in controversy recently over an FBI investigation conducted at its base in Indianapolis.

The Race says

It was amazing to me that Foster had been a fair way down some teams’ shortlist of drivers given how dominant he has been this season.

But that’s a reflection of the marketplace, not the driver.

Because of the mid-season introduction of the hybrid unit, costs have risen and a lot of the smaller teams are looking for a driver to bring significant budget to make up for the rise in costs.

Foster brings his Indy NXT scholarship prize - the budget to do the Indy 500 and one other race - but isn’t from the kind of background that can afford to fund a whole season, so this is a huge opportunity for the US-domiciled Brit.

After finishing second in Ginetta Juniors in 2018 and then third in British F4 and British F3 respectively the following two years, Foster finally made the long-anticipated move to the States off the back of finishing second in his rookie Euroformula Open campaign to a driver who had raced in that series for four seasons prior.

The switch to the US, initially living on the West Coast in LA, gave Foster the chance to fight for scholarships at the end of the year. It provided much more of a prize than many equivalent European championships.

Winning his first ever oval race in Indy Pro 2000 and the title at his first attempt showed he had a knack for the intricacies of racing Stateside.

But for me, this season has been the one that shows he is IndyCar calibre. Not only has he been dominant, but he’s acknowledged the learnings of a tricky 2023 season where he had plenty of bad luck but also made some mistakes trying too hard to impress and fight for the championship.

A more-centred approach on controlling the things he has control over has yielded incredible results. Even if the standard of the Indy NXT field has been far from its best this year.

Last year he was racing like the driver who had never done a second year in a series and like his life depended on it.

This year he raced with the understanding that as long as he delivers in the areas he can control, he’s done all that he can do.

And gosh, it turns out that what he can do is...a lot.

He’s always had raw speed in the locker. This season he added the kind of consistency and self-awareness you need to be successful.

If the Rahal equipment is up to it, he’ll be the rookie of the year favourite.

Crunch day for Chadwick's 2025 IndyCar chances

Read more

There's no doubt that the RLL organisation has been struggling, losing myriad personnel, struggling to bring in and keep engineering hires that it needs, and fighting a revolving door which hasn't allowed it to solve some of the key weaknesses.

It's been fine on selected road and street circuits, even won as recently as 2023 with Christian Lundgaard - who is off to McLaren next year - but its oval form has been poor. There's no escaping that fact.

It's a big off-season for RLL. Putting a searingly-quick rookie in the car could be one crucial element in the equation for next season.

Which seats are left in IndyCar

Only Juncos Hollinger Racing and Dale Coyne Racing are yet to confirm any drivers for 2025.

RLL, Prema Racing and Chip Ganassi Racing all have one driver to announce. Kyffin Simpson will be at Ganassi, while Prema has always been expected to sign Robert Shwartzman, although regular interest in him from other teams in different series makes that situation more complicated.

The full-time 2025 grid so far

AJ Foyt - Santino Ferrucci, David Malukas
Andretti - Marcus Ericsson, Colton Herta, Kyle Kirkwood
Arrow McLaren - Pato O'Ward, Christian Lundgaard, Nolan Siegel
Chip Ganassi - Scott Dixon, Alex Palou, (Kyffin Simpson TBA)
Dale Coyne - TBC x2
Ed Carpenter - Christian Rasmussen, Alexander Rossi
Juncos Hollinger - TBC x2
Meyer Shank - Marcus Armstrong, Felix Rosenqvist
Prema Racing - Callum Ilott, TBC
Rahal Letterman Lanigan - Louis Foster, Graham Rahal, TBC
Team Penske - Scott McLaughlin, Josef Newgarden, Will Power

Romain Grosjean is wanted to return at JHR but all is quiet on that front in a team which is looking for sponsorship, while Conor Daly's excellent stand-in performance at the team might have earned him a drive for next year, if someone with a bigger budget doesn't gazump him.

Dale Coyne regularly announced drivers for both of its cars in the week leading up to each race last year, so its line-up won't be known until later in the year/sometime before the first race!