It makes sense that Fox would want to highlight driver Josef Newgarden while he was leading Sunday’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500 in Madison, Illinois. They just so happened to pick the worst possible time to do it.
Ah well.
About midway through the race, Louis Foster lost control of his car and collided with the wall, spinning around as he came down the width of the track. Newgarden attempted to avoid him but ultimately had nowhere to go. The two-time Indianapolis 500 winner hit Foster’s car and went airborne before flipping over in what was a shocking scene.
IndyCar safety officials immediately attended to Newgarden, who radioed his Team Penske crew to say he was fine.
Making things a bit awkward was that moments before the crash, Fox had inserted a montage of Newgarden doing several poses where he stands imposingly and stares at the camera. To go directly from that montage to a shot of his car skidding down the track upside down made things even more jarring than they already were.
It was a good idea by the Fox production crew. Just really, really bad timing.
“I got a bit of a wiggle … got a bit too high and went into the marbles,” Foster said of the incident afterward. “I just couldn’t stop the car from spinning and, obviously, a pretty scary impact with myself and Josef. I’m glad he is OK.”
It was a pretty eventful day for Fox’s IndyCar crew. At one point in the pit, driver Devlin DeFrancesco stopped running and accidentally struck the Fox Sports camera operator following him. With no time to react, the cameraperson caught the back of DeFrancesco’s heel and went down hard. The camera stayed on, seeing the operator face down on the pavement, staring into his own lens.
Kyle Kirkwood won the race, his second consecutive and third overall on the season.