IndyCar fans were dealt an unfortunate situation on Sunday afternoon.
Viewers watching The Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix on Fox experienced a prolonged outage that began in lap 28 of 65. At about 4:15 p.m. ET, Fox’s coverage of the race froze for about 20 seconds on-air before the network went to commercial. Coming out of commercial break a few minutes later, NASCAR play-by-play announcer Mike Joy welcomed the Fox 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
About 10 minutes after the delay began, the IndyCar on Fox social media account revealed that the network was experiencing an electrical issue with its production truck that took the broadcast off air.
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
Then, around 4:35 p.m. ET, IndyCar coverage abruptly returned on Fox, with play-by-play announcer Will Buxton thanking viewers for sticking around despite the outage.
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
Technical difficulties happen. And a power outage is among the worst technical issues possible. Sure, one could argue that Fox’s production setup should involve enough redundancies where the network can guarantee power restoration within a few minutes of an outage. But without knowing the exact details of the outage, it’s tough to judge Fox too harshly.
In all, fans missed 12 laps of the action.
Fox is currently in its first season as IndyCar’s exclusive broadcast partner. The network is airing all 17 IndyCar races on its over-the-air broadcast channel under the new agreement.
The network is clearly high on IndyCar’s potential as a motorsports property, making moments like this even more unfortunate. For IndyCar fans, hopefully Sunday’s technical difficulties are just a slight hiccup in an otherwise successful presentation of the circuit from Fox.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.