Rate limit config not working in nginx

I'm trying to rate limit any calls to URLs with prefix /api/, I've configured a rate limit with the configuration attached, but I'm not seeing any throttling when using Axios to test.

limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=mylimit:10m rate=1r/s;
server {
    server_name gmmff.test;
    root /home/angel/wdev/laravel/gmf/public;

    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";

    error_log /var/log/nginx/gmf.log warn;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/gmf-access.log;
    index index.php;

    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location /api/ {
        limit_req zone=mylimit;
        rewrite ^/api/(.*)$ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }

    error_page 404 /index.php;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
        deny all;
    }

}

The URIs beginning with /api/ are rewritten to /index.php and the limit_req directive is no longer in scope when the latter URI is being processed.

Option 1) You could process the index.php file within the location /api/ block.

For example:

location /api/ {
    limit_req zone=mylimit;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root/index.php;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;
}

Simply point SCRIPT_FILENAME to the location of index.php.

Option 2) Move the limit_req directive so that it is always in scope, but effectively turn it on and off by manipulating the "key" variable with a map directive.

For example:

map $request_uri $token {
    ~^/api/    $binary_remote_addr;
    default    '';
}
limit_req_zone $token zone=mylimit:10m rate=1r/s;

server {
    ...
    limit_req zone=mylimit;
    ...
}

From the documentation:

Requests with an empty key value are not accounted.