Laravel Routing Always 404 on API Post

I'm in Laravel 5.8 in Windows trying to create an inbound API route (which I've never done before - we have hundreds of routes that all work just fine, but this one seems to be killing us). Postman always gives me a 404 when I try to hit this route. It never seems to match the route at all.

Am I doing something wrong in either Postman or my setup?

Please help before I pull out my beard!

http://MYHOSTISHERE/api/v1?event=NewDealerSetUp&api_key=MYKEYISHERE

I have this route:

Route::post('v1?event={event}&api_key={api_key}', 'API\APIController@index');

The route shows in artisan route list:

|        | POST      | api/v1?event={event}&api_key={api_key}                                                                                                     |                                    | App\Http\Controllers\API\APIController@index                                             | api                        |

I've set all api routes unprotected in VerifyCsrfToken middleware:

protected $except = [
        'api/*'
    ];

The start and end of my controller:

namespace App\Http\Controllers\API;

use App\Models\Log\LogAPI;
use App\Models\Members;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Redirect;

class APIController extends Controller
{
    public function index($event, $api_key, Request $request)
    {
        $data = filter_var_array((array)$request, FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS);

        [...]

        if($event == 'NewDealerSetUp'){
            $setup = new NewDealerSetup();

            return $setup->newDealerSetup($request);
        }

And here is my .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    <IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
        Options -MultiViews -Indexes
    </IfModule>

    RewriteEngine On

    # Handle Authorization Header
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} .
    RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

    # Redirect Trailing Slashes If Not A Folder...
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/$
    RewriteRule ^ %1 [L,R=301]

    # Handle Front Controller...
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
    
    # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    # NOTES: 
    # the log: strip per-dir prefix: C:/apache/htdocs/MYAPPNAME/public/ ->[EMPTY]  ... takes the ^[EMPTY] and returns an empty
    # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

</IfModule>