Written by Archie O’Reilly
Jacob Abel took his third Indy NXT win of the season for Abel Motorsports at Portland International Raceway last weekend. Abel overtook Andretti Global’s Louis Foster at the start and led every lap from there in order to keep the championship fight mathematically alive.
Portland had offered Foster a first opportunity to clinch the title if circumstances fell his way, but while he started on pole, he had to settle for following in close pursuit behind Abel. Risk-taking was not necessary though and Foster’s championship lead still stands at 79 points with two races remaining.
The race was punctuated by only a single caution across two laps for contact instigated by Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Ricardo Escotto, who failed to pull off an ambitious move on Andretti’s James Roe at Turn 1 on Lap 7.
Bryce Aron followed his Andretti teammate Foster for his second NXT podium in his rookie season.
How Abel picked up an important win
Getting through Turn 1 is always earmarked as being the most important part of racing at Portland. Both Abel and Foster managed to avoid contact behind but it was second-place starter Abel who emerged in the safest position of all.
“It’s a really unique kind of start here,” Abel said. “We start accelerating basically on the exit of the last corner, so it almost performs a little bit like a restart. It was like an over-under type of move. [Foster] got a good run out of the last corner, [I] tucked into the draft, faked left a little bit, then dove it down on the inside.
“We were talking: ‘How much room was really there?’ I said I didn’t really know. I was just going to go for it either way.”
Abel knew clean air was “very important” if he was to beat Foster, to whom he had a “little bit of a gap to” across the weekend. But Abel’s crew refined his car and edged closer to Foster, who won at Portland as a rookie last year. Keeping Foster behind in dirty air was pivotal for Abel after taking the lead.
Abel trying to enjoy closing races
Abel has kept his foot slightly in the title battle with oval rounds at the Milwaukee Mile and Nashville Superspeedway remaining, albeit his chances may be bleak with two 16th-place finishes enough to seal the deal for Foster. But Portland was an important win nonetheless.
“I think we’re trying to enjoy it,” Abel said. Trying to enjoy the last few races here, trying to go out and get race wins, as good results as possible. I think championship is a little far out. The only way to really keep that alive in any sense is to win races.
“We’re just trying to go out and perform and hopefully opening eyes to some IndyCar teams because that’s where I’m trying to get to next year.”
Eight races went by without Abel winning - a drought spanning back to the first race of May’s Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course doubleheader. For Abel, this made his third win “almost as special as the first two” at Barber Motorsports Park and in the first Indy race.
“Getting our first wins of the season so early on then not doing it for a few races in a row got a little bit rough,” Abel said. “I missed winning races. It was obviously a really good start to the year.
“We just really put our head down and kept working at it. We knew we had the pace and had the ability to get back up here. We were able to pull it off.”
IndyCar target after “very successful” year
Coming into the 2024 season, Abel had four podiums after two years in Indy Lights/NXT. With two races to run in his third season, he has his first three wins under his belt and his podium tally sits at a lofty 13.
“It’s been very successful,” Abel said, despite a more barren mid-season run compared to Foster. “As a driver, I’ve taken another step in my progression, as well as the team at the same time. It’s been a super rewarding process for that to be kind of happening in sync a little bit.
“We’ve had a super, super strong year. Just to even compete with teams and drivers like Andretti and Louis, Caio [Collet], HMD [Motorsports], it’s a really tough feat. I think we’ve done it and we beat them weekends, have been right there in the fight all year long. Super proud of the whole entire team. Really proud of our effort.
“Unfortunately the championship kind of slipped away in the middle of the season with a little bit of bad luck, a little bit of mistakes here and there. But I think at the end of the day we’re still a relatively small team and a relatively young team compared to these other organisations.
“For us to accomplish what we’ve accomplished I think is really impressive. Hopefully really indicative of what the future may hold for the programme and hopefully for me as a driver.”
The Abel Motorsports programme has been shaped around Abel and his progress, expanding and excelling in Indy NXT. Abel’s target is firmly for that to result in an IndyCar move for him in 2025.
“I’ll probably give you the same answer as every other driver looking to go in IndyCar next year,” he said. “We’ve been in talks with teams. It’s a tough time to be going into IndyCar right now with multiple different factors.
“It’s one of the most competitive series in the world with some of the best drivers in the world. Just trying to get a seat at the table is pretty difficult. But we’re working our hardest at it.”
Foster closes in on title despite P2
Foster may have finished behind Abel, but even with his buffer in the championship lead having reduced, he did the job he needed to and did not take any unnecessary chances. There was a hint of disappointment but spirits remained high and Foster was still relaxed post-race.
“Jacob got a really good start,” he said. “I felt like I defended enough but obviously a little bit extra there on the inside that Jacob was willing to take the risk and go there. It paid off for him. That’s what he’s got to do at this stage of the championship.
“Once he was there, it was like: ‘Yours. I don’t want any involvement in this. Once I got through turn one cleanly, I was happy. We put a tonne of pressure on him, definitely had a very fast car at the start of the race, really throughout the race, but faded at the end with tyres falling off following so closely for so long.
“If we would have been out front, we would have had the car to pull away today. Sometimes you have to come second.”
There was some high-speed contact between the pair at one point as Foster attempted a pass at the end of the backstretch. Mercifully, neither suffered damage and Foster took no more risks from there.
“I’ve been following Jacob a few times throughout my Indy NXT career and he is very good at using push-to-pass at the start of the race,” Foster said. “I wanted to go for a spot where he wouldn’t expect it. So I went into Turn 7 to Turn 10.
“I had a nose up the inside - I was never really going to commit to that move. I wasn’t alongside enough. Then he fully committed to turning in. How either of us finished the race after that is beyond me really. But it was good, clean, fair racing.”
The value of momentum in title bid
By finishing second, Foster extended to a run of nine top-two finishes in succession. Since taking a first win of the season in the second Indy road course race, momentum has built emphatically.
“I think it’s very important,” Foster said. “I think once the team is hitting their strides, everyone feels good about themselves, they keep pushing.
“I think if you’re a driver that tends to finish second, per se, you can tend to feel a lot more motivated to get back to the top step. Luckily I’m with a team that works so hard, even though we have been winning all these races, we work just as hard as we were at the start of the year when we had a bit of a bad few rounds.
“Although we’ve got good momentum, we’re also continuing our work at pace. I think it’s just a combination of those things. I need two 16ths [to win the championship]... I don’t want to do that. I want to win two races. We’re going to go to Milwaukee - we led the test there - [and] we’ll see what happens.”
The prospect of stepping up to IndyCar “feels pretty hard” for Foster at this point given the competition for seats. But only three seasons into his time in the United States, which has also seen him win the Indy Pro 2000 in 2022, it remains a viable opportunity with scholarship money likely to come.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect when I came to the US,” Foster said. “Obviously I came over here in 2022 - we managed to win Indy Pro my first year, which really helped me move up to Indy NXT with financial support from Anderson Promotions.
“I would have loved to have done one year of Indy NXT. We had a strong pace last year, just as strong as this year, but just not the consistency that a second driver has.
“There was no real plan in motion - there were no prior deals with an IndyCar team for three, four years down the line. There was nothing like that. It was: ‘Come here and see what we can do in America.’ The opportunity it has presented me… I can’t thank everyone out here enough.”
Aron thriving under tough competition
Aron made the switch to Indy NXT from EuroFormula Open for the 2024 season, putting a junior career in Europe to an end. A first genuine glimpse of his ability to stand up to the tough competition in NXT came with a third-place finish at Laguna Seca.
He has now backed that up with another rookie podium only four races later at Portland. And progressing through the Turn 1 melee after starting sixth was pivotal to his progress.
“Managed to hustle down inside, had a good start,” he said. “I didn’t actually see much of the action - I think it happened to the left of me. Got inside, braked late, [was] a bit assertive to make sure I got the position. That’s where we were the rest of the race. Good starts usually lead to good races and that’s what happened today.”
It was always going to be a challenge for Aron to stand up to the more experienced likes of Foster and Abel having not raced many of the American tracks, despite being from the United States.
“I never did the Road to Indy,” Aron said. “Basically 95 percent of the tracks were new to me, hadn’t done any oval racing. Really jumping into the deep end here. Plus in the series you don’t have a tonne of off-season testing - a lot to learn.
“Luckily with all the help from everyone at Andretti, was able to get up to speed. With the help of my teammates like Louis, looking at their data, talking to them, has helped me a lot over the past few races and the season. Really grateful for that. But definitely a difficult job trying to compete against experience.
“It’s not normal when you’re in Europe. The car might be slightly different…. you go to new tracks that are a similar flow. When you come here, I think the tracks are quite a bit different. It’s a challenge but rewarding when you get it right.”
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