Andretti Autosport driver Louis Foster led all 35 laps in Sunday’s Indy NXT win at Portland en route to his second career win. While the drive was an easy one for the English born driver, he luckily evaded the first lap carnage that saw most of the championship contenders collected.

Points leader Christian Rasmussen was punted from behind in the opening corner sparking a chain reaction nine car crash that caused the lone caution of the day. Collected with Rasmussen was Hunter McElrea, Jacob Abel, Reece Gold, Josh Pierson, Kyffin Simpson and Victor Franzoni.

Rasmussen would continue on to finish fifth in his No. 6 HMD entry for his 9th top five finish of the season. He had 8 all of last season as he actually extends his points lead to 65 points with two races remaining, both next weekend in Laguna Seca.

That’s because while he was able to continue on, P2 and P3 in points entering the day each scored their first DNF’s of the season with McElrea coming home 15th and Able in 16th.

When the carnage was cleaned up Foster pulled away on the Lap 5 restart and never looked back en route to besting Nolan Siegel by 7.8583-seconds.

Foster has an impressive five podium finishes in his rookie season including three top two finishes in the last six races.

For Siegel, he came from 7th to get some momentum back as he jumps also from 4th in points to 3rd. This was his first podium since he scored his second straight win back in June in Road America. Since, he finished 15th, 15th, 5th, 12th, 6th which saw him slide from the points lead to as low as fourth.

To pick up a podium is a better sign of things to come to end the season with.

Danial Frost, Christian Bogle and Rasmussen rounded out the top five.