Speaking to Motor Sport about making it big in the States, Foster tries to assert that it’s business as usual as he gets back into the “competitive swing” of things.

But surely it must feel a little different to his previous season build-ups?

“It does obviously,” he admits. “I’ve been trying to achieve this since I was a kid, but especially during the last three, four years since I’ve come over to America.

“So it’s definitely a big step for me. But I think my mindset is: although it’s really hard to get into IndyCar, it’s also really hard to stay.

“I’m maybe not taking it in as much as I probably would want to, but I’m just so super focused on getting the job done.

“It’s definitely sort of real, but I know that I’ve got to keep my head straight and keep things simple, because my entire career up until now has built up to this moment.”

By utterly dominating Indy NXT last year, Foster is now the rising star in US single-seater racing.

The Rahal team was previously spearheaded by its most recent race-winner Christian Lundgaard.

The Dane made the decision to switch to McLaren for 2025, which left Rahal looking for a new driver to build its team around. The Zionsville, Indiana-based squad decided that Foster was that man.

“It’s a great team to learn from,” he says. “They’ve got Bobby [as team boss] and [his son] Graham [still active in IndyCar], both two great drivers.

“Bobby’s got a bit more historic experience, whereas Graham is in the series now.

“Coming in as the rookie is definitely not easy in IndyCar. So I knew it was going to be an important thing to have a team that I could lean on.”

And, in theory, what a team. Rahal’s eponymous squad won the title in its debut year with Bobby at the wheel in 1992.

Since then, it’s became used to a midfield life punctuated by the occasional win – the penultimate victory being a famous Indy 500 triumph for Takuma Sato in 2020, and the last being Lungaard’s at Toronto in 2023.

In an attempt to push itself to the front, the team opened a new state-of-the-art team base in Indiana, including an F1-style ‘mission control’ remote centre to mastermind race strategy live back at base during the race.

The upshot is that Rahal is one of the best-equipped teams on the grid, yet it again struggled last year – Lundgaard was the team’s best finisher in the championship with 11th.

“It doesn’t make any sense, that they’re struggling as much they are,” says Foster. “They have F1-level facilities, world class people.

“They have done everything right, but it’s just not clicking right now. It hasn’t for the last couple years, and they’d be the first to admit that. But I can see them improving. There’s definitely a vision there for me and the team going forward. My contract is ‘multi-year’ – they have a lot of faith in me.

“The top end speed is pretty phenomenal”

Where Foster will have to put his attention most is the oval circuits, where the team has particularly struggled.

It just so happens though, ironically like British Indy champs before him like Nigel Mansell and Dan Wheldon, that Foster is a bit of a demon on the ‘roundy-rounds’ – the young charge took Indy NXT wins on ovals at Iowa, Gateway, Milwaukee and Nashville.

Rahal will need all Foster’s oval aptitude this year if it wants to go up in the IndyCar world.

“I do enjoy the ovals, but it’s pretty clear that we have a lot of work ahead of us – there’s a wall we need to break down,” he says.

“The team has got all the right pieces of the puzzle to be able to fix it, to make it better. It’s just putting them in the right places.”

Looking towards the here and now, Foster will be putting a lot of his attention on the notoriously treacherous first corner in St Petersburg.

Running down a start-finish straight based on an airport runway which funnels into a tight right-left sequence, it commonly catches out several in the packed field – the Brit is mindful of getting his breaking point right.

“The top end speed is pretty phenomenal in the IndyCar,” he comments. “The Indy NXT car plateaus at around 140, and though it accelerates at a similar rate, the IndyCar keeps pulling all the way to 200mph.”

Foster says his two main targets for the year are top become both Indy 500 Rookie of the Year and IndyCar Rookie of the Year, going up against Prema’s Robert Shwartzman and Dale Coyne’s Jacob Abel.

Shwartzman’s team-mate Callum Ilott is the only other Brit in the field, and is something of a St Petersburg specialist having finished fifth and 11th there in his last two appearances at the Florida circuit.

“It would be nice to end as top Brit…”

Does Foster want to establish himself as the next British star a la the swashbuckling Mansell and Wheldon, plus Graham Hill and Jim Clark before them?

“I used to race against Callum coming up and looked up to him, though it would be nice to beat him,” he says carefully, clearly not wanting to upset his friend.

“But it would be nice to end as top Brit…”

We might just have a new Stars & Stripes hero on our hands very soon.