Last season, Fox Sports took a new approach to showcasing its partnership with the NTT IndyCar Series — putting drivers front and center with unique TV spots.
Videos by FanBuzz
This tactic paid off for the broadcast partner, but it also created an interesting challenge heading toward the 2026 campaign, its second airing the open-wheel series.
"This kind of sounds silly, but those were a big hit, obviously, last year," Blake Danforth, VP of Creative Marketing at Fox Sports, told FanBuzz. "And then, you know, we're like, the pressure was on. And we're like, 'How do we beat it this year?'"
Fox Sports could have gone with what worked in 2025. After all, the spots featuring Josef Newgarden, Pato O'Ward, and Alex Palou put the drivers' personalities on full display while simultaneously highlighting their achievements on the race track.
Danforth and Fox Sports did not go this route. They continued working with the team at Special US — the group behind the first IndyCar advertisements and several for the NFL side of Fox Sports — but they chose to put four different drivers in unexpected situations.
The first spot highlighted two-time IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden. It put him in the middle of a garden party and had him grabbing a fistful of raw hamburger while the narrator discussed his darker side. He then held a heart in his hands.
Danforth noted that Newgarden's spot had some nods to the long-running TV series "Dexter," which focused on a blood splatter analyst who moonlighted as a serial killer. A decidedly different tone than last season's spot, which compared Newgarden's jawline to Tom Brady's and led to an in-store cologne display.
The Fastest Racing on Earth is back.
Check out @josefnewgarden March 1 on FOX. pic.twitter.com/ku0BbM4NkA
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) January 17, 2026
"The Josef one that you just saw, like, that one was a surprise really," Danforth said. "It needed to hit just the right tone to work. It could have been a little too scary or a little too serious, and people wouldn't get it."
The second spot, which aired to nearly 50 million people during last weekend's NFC championship, put O'Ward in the driver's seat of a garbage truck. The nine-time IndyCar winner raced through a neighborhood while slamming into garbage cans and sliding around corners.
The next two spots in the series will focus on two-time champion Will Power and four-time champion Alex Palou as they take on frustrating experiences. We will keep the respective scenarios under wraps, but IndyCar fans will associate with the predicaments these drivers face.
He was born with his foot on the gas. @PatricioOWard and @INDYCAR return March 1 on FOX. pic.twitter.com/84GztQWrGO
— INDYCAR on FOX (@IndyCarOnFOX) January 25, 2026
"I just think these guys were incredibly hungry to do it," Danforth said when asked about pitching drivers on these ideas. "I think they recognized there was a sort of lightning moment here to go for. And so everybody was incredibly willing.
"Like this year, telling Josef 'You're gonna hold raw meat and a heart.' He's like, 'All right, I know when to be the bad guy, but I'm down with it. Whatever you guys want to try, whatever you guys want to do, I'm down.'"
Fox Sports and Special US benefited from having willing drivers. After all, it's not like creating these TV spots required a director and one or two camera operators. These IndyCar spots became more like music videos from MTV's peak era.
"This was very big. I don't know the count, if it was 100 people on set, but I will say the directors nowadays bring all the toys," Danforth said. "They'll bring a crane, all kinds of different shooting rigs. I think we had a rig in the grill shooting up (at the raw meat).
"And then each spot, like, when you see Pato's spot, that's got a pretty involved, many, many-camera setup on that one as well. I think we had a drone on that as well. So there's definitely a lot. Each one is definitely a serious production."
Why is Fox Sports taking this approach to hyping up the 2026 IndyCar season? Multiple reasons exist, but one of the biggest is the desire to make these drivers superstars.
The creative team can't simply operate under the assumption that racing fans around the world already know every detail about the IndyCar competitors. Fox Sports wants to build the mythology.
Another reason is that this approach paid off on the NFL side. When Fox Sports first began working with Special US around 2023, it used a multi-part campaign to promote the broadcast team featuring Kevin Burkhardt, Greg Olsen, Erin Andrews, and Tom Rinaldi.
This wasn't a simple, "Watch NFL games on Fox" campaign, however. It added some mirth while dubbing Burkhardt "Lil' Baby Kay Kay" and creating the term "Sackaroni and Cheese." This campaign also put Olsen in a wig and had him impersonate Hall of Fame quarterback-turned-analyst Terry Bradshaw.
"I think the one fun thing with Fox Sports is it's bold, brash, unapologetic," Danforth said. "There's a wink, which we try to do with with all our work. I think now, like we're pushing towards characters.
"Building characters and trying to create stories and just trying to connect these guys as human or a little bit bigger than life. So I think that's maybe the subtle twist to some of the work. And wherever we can have character stories, I think we can win."
