IndyCar fans faced an unfortunate situation on Sunday afternoon when viewers tuning into The Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix on Fox experienced a significant broadcast outage starting at lap 28 of 65. At around 4:15 p.m. ET, Fox’s coverage froze for approximately 20 seconds before cutting to commercial. Following the break, NASCAR play-by-play announcer Mike Joy welcomed the audience to the FS1 coverage of the Straight Talk Wireless 400 from Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Fox experiences technical difficulties during its IndyCar broadcast and has now switched to the ongoing NASCAR race in Miami.pic.twitter.com/bkqVMux779
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 23, 2025
Approximately 10 minutes into the delay, the IndyCar on Fox social media account confirmed that an electrical issue with its production truck was the cause of the outage. They mentioned that they were working to resolve the problem quickly, and in the meantime, NASCAR coverage would continue on FOX and FS1.
Our INDYCAR production truck has an electrical issue. We are working to get it fixed as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, we have NASCAR bonus coverage on FOX and FS1 until the INDYCAR truck is back online.
— INDYCAR on FOX (@IndyCarOnFOX) March 23, 2025
Finally, around 4:35 p.m. ET, IndyCar coverage returned to Fox, with play-by-play announcer Will Buxton expressing gratitude to viewers for their patience during the outage. This power interruption lasted about 15 minutes.
Fox’s IndyCar coverage has returned after a power outage in its production truck took the broadcast off air for about 15 minutes.pic.twitter.com/dcymjhFrsu
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 23, 2025
While technical difficulties can occur, a power outage is particularly disruptive. Although one might argue that Fox’s production setup should have implemented sufficient redundancies to ensure quick power restoration, without knowing the specifics surrounding the issue, it is challenging to hold Fox to a harsh critique. Ultimately, fans missed 12 laps of the race.
This season marks Fox’s first as IndyCar’s exclusive broadcast partner, with the network airing all 17 IndyCar races on its over-the-air channel under the new agreement. The network is evidently optimistic about IndyCar’s potential as a motorsports entity, making incidents like this even more disappointing. For IndyCar fans, we hope that Sunday’s technical challenges are merely a minor setback in an otherwise promising presentation of the circuit by Fox.
