The 20-year-old Briton delivered a performance that mirrored his win on Saturday, once again leading all 35 laps en route to winning by 4.3962s on the 2.238-mile, 11-turn natural terrain road course. With the win and an error by rival Jacob Abel, Foster now takes sole possession of the championship lead with a 35-point advantage.
“Yeah, like I said yesterday, Andretti has given me an amazing car, I’m just out there doing my thing,” Foster said.
“It’s been a great weekend. Sunny skies in California, you can’t ask for anything more. Super happy with that. We’ve worked really hard to be here, so I am really happy it’s paying dividends now.”
HMD Motorsports rookie Caio Collet finished second, ahead of Andretti Global rookie Bryce Aron in third.
Yuven Sundaramoorthy crossed the finish line fourth in the No. 22 Abel Motorsports entry, the same place he finished in Race 1.
Andretti Cape’s Salvador de Alba Jr charged from 11th on the grid to finish fifth, with pseudo team-mate Jamie Chadwick passing the most cars in her Andretti Global machine and going from 14th to sixth.
The Race
In a near repeat of the start in the opening race, Collet attempted an outside pass on Foster going into Turn 2. Foster successfully defended the lead, but Collet was able to remain closer in the short term.
After five laps, Foster built up a lead of 1.4467s over Collet, with Gold and Abel running third and fourth, respectively.
The running order among the frontrunners remained unchanged as Foster expanded his advantage of over 3s by lap 15.
However, contact between HMD Motorsports team-mates Callum Hedge and Christian Brooks, in his debut weekend in Indy NXT, brought out the caution on lap 16 after the pair collided battling for 10th in Turn 2. Brooks continued on, but Hedge was left stalled in the middle of the Andretti Hairpin.
When the race resumed on lap 17, Foster got a clean jump to break away from the field. He established a lead of 1.5513s over the next four laps.
Foster’s lead was 2.7s over Collet with less than 10 laps to go, with Gold a distant third at 12.3s back.
The final step of the podium changed hands with eight laps to go when Gold and Abel came together in the Corkscrew, which resulted in suspension damage for Gold’s No. 10 HMD Motorsports entry that led to an early retirement. Meanwhile, the momentum carried Abel off course and allowed Andretti Global Bryce Aron to push by both and into third.
Abel was handed a drive-thru penalty for avoidable contact by Race Control. He finished 11th.
Foster’s lead stood at 3.3s with five laps to go, while the best battle on track was for sixth between Andretti Global’s Jamie Chadwick, HMD Motorsports with Force Indy’s Myles Rowe and Brooks.
Rowe’s chances to remain in the fight faded after going with three laps to go, plummeting down the running order to 16th.
Foster set sail to the checkered flag to clean up the weekend, with Collet finishing runner-up in both races.
