Why does nginx proxy redirect the request?

Question

I'm trying to pass the API requests to the backend with NGINX reverse proxy.

When I send a get request to /api/testdata, it sends a request to {frontendURL}/api/testData which returns with 301(redirect) status code. After that It redirects the request to the correct url {backendURL}/api/testData.

Network tab network tab 1 network tab 2 network tab 3

nginx config:

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;



    root /usr/share/nginx/html;

    server_name _;

    location /health {
            access_log off;
            add_header 'Content-Type' 'application/json';
            return 200 '{"status":"Healthy"}';
    }

    location / {
            # First attempt to serve request as file, then
            # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
            try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location /api {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3001; 
        proxy_redirect off;
    }

Can I somehow prevent the redirect request so that only one request goes out? Or is this the normal behaviour?