'It's terrifying': Meet Will Buxton, next voice of IndyCar. (He's never attended an Indy 500.)

INDIANAPOLIS – As 33 Indy cars scream down the front stretch of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 25, bringing 350,000 fans to their feet as they roar at the flash of the green flag, Will Buxton will be taking all of it in for the very first time.

Yes, you read that right. The new voice of IndyCar will be attending his first Indianapolis 500 raceday while he simultaneously calls play-by-play for three hours and six million more fans watch from home as Fox airs the Greatest Spectacle in Racing for the first time.

Intimidating doesn’t cover it, but the British broadcaster’s naturally daring and exciting nature may be his biggest strength. Buxton readily admitted Tuesday afternoon, as he spoke with IndyStar overlooking a snowy downtown Indianapolis in his first interview as Fox’s lead IndyCar anchor, “I’ve never ever done a job that people would say I’ve had the qualifications to do, but that just means you have to work your ass off in order to be the best you can and hope people come along with you for the ride and enjoy your enjoyment of it.”

When he joined the Formula 1 press corps in 2002, Buxton had never written a single story. When he took over as press officer of the GP2 series in 2004, he’d never written a press release. When he was tabbed to call play-by-play of the GP2 and GP3 series on the worldwide feed by Formula One Management in 2008, Buxton confesses he’d never held a microphone – “Except when I’d done karaoke.” And when SPEED Channel called on him to take over a pit reporter role for its F1 coverage in 2010, Buxton says he’d never been allowed on the other side of the fence.

So manning the booth in the Pagoda and walking millions of fans through the drama of 200 laps while cars roll into Turn 1 at upwards of 230 mph? It’s the perfect next step in Buxton’s unexpected rise into motorsports notoriety.

“It’s daunting. I’m not going to beat around the bush – it’s terrifying,” he told IndyStar. “I’m equal parts so excited for this year, but also honestly terrified, but I think you should be, because every once in a while, you’ve got to take a risk and get out of the comfy seat and go out and do something that excites you.”

Buxton: 'I can't let this go. It's going to be too much fun'

For seven years, Buxton’s ‘comfy seat’ was his ‘presenter’ role for Liberty Media, a job he took over in the infancy of F1TV, positioning him as one of the sport’s leading pundits at a time in his career when he’d largely had a much lower profile while working as an F1 (and occasionally IndyCar) pit reporter and calling junior formula broadcasts.

His work on F1TV introduced him to the world, but his role as a series expert on Netflix’s hit behind-the-scenes F1 docuseries ‘Drive to Survive’ made him a viral – albeit sometimes meme-able – sensation, particularly with a rather novice American fanbase that fell in love with F1 through DTS. Nearly five years later, Buxton has a social media following that far surpasses all but a few IndyCar drivers.

His cache within the mainstream American sports and entertainment ecosystem unquestionably outweighs any of the stars IndyCar has to offer. Drop Buxton in Times Square, downtown L.A. or The Strip in Vegas, and it won’t take him long to be recognized. His star power is an element the series has lacked across the paddock for decades, and Buxton says the weight of the responsibility he now holds of attempting to transform IndyCar’s dwarf stars into supernovas isn’t lost on him.

“That untapped potential of IndyCar, that’s what I’m so excited about. It’s the fastest racing on earth. It’s the most exciting racing championship anywhere. You go into a Sunday, and you have no idea who’s going to win,” Buxton said. “Every track, everywhere we go for 17 races, that’s true. What’s not to love about that?

“I firmly believe that rising tides lift all ships, and the success of ‘Drive to Survive’ and the huge growth and popularity of F1 in the U.S., I think, is a huge positive for the IndyCar series, because people have started to fall in love again (in the U.S.) with open-wheel racing. If they love an F1 race, just come watch IndyCar. I’d love F1 fans to think, ‘You know what? I’m going to give IndyCar a go’ and then come to a race and leave thinking, ‘I’m going to watch every single one of these races, because oh my goodness is it enthralling.’”

Though he was by no means the only one inside the Convention Center raving about Fox’s first of several promotional spots aimed at creating a newfound buzz around IndyCar, Buxton pointed to the 45-second commercial that portrayed Josef Newgarden as a modern-day superhero and Hollywood star as the type of newfound dedication and creativity Fox executives swayed him with during a swift courting period over the last month.

The conversations that eventually landed Buxton in an IndyCar booth sprouted out of dinner with James Hinchcliffe, who for the last two years has worked alongside his British counterpart on F1TV when his IndyCar broadcast calendar allowed, two months ago in Sao Paolo.

When Hinchcliffe asked Buxton about his future with F1TV, he was surprised to learn Buxton wasn’t locked down beyond the closing stretch of F1’s 2024 campaign.

“Would you be interested in talking to Fox?” Hinchcliffe asked.

“Would they be interested in talking to me?” Buxton replied sheepishly, somewhat stunned at the suggestion he’d be considered for a role with IndyCar’s new broadcast partner.

“And he said, ‘Yeah, your name came up in a meeting, but aren’t you tied up in F1?’ And when I said I wasn’t, he said, ‘Would you be willing to take a call?’" Buxton tells now. “And I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

The call with Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks and Brad Zager, the president of production and operations and the network’s executive producer, came a month later in December.

“It was immediately obvious the huge resource Fox wanted to invest in this and the determination they had to make this a massive success and make IndyCar as popular in the U.S. as it deserves to be,” Buxton said. “And their faith in me to lead that broadcast and help ignite a passion both in an existing fanbase as well as a new one is something that really resonated with me.

“It was one of those 'sliding doors' moments where you think, ‘I can’t let this go. It’s going to be too much fun.'"

Stepping out of the 'comfy seat' and into the limelight

Asked how he plans to approach his role in Fox’s IndyCar booth, given his lack of recent play-by-play racing broadcast experience, Buxton said he likes to view himself as a passionate storyteller and a referee to separate Hinchcliffe and Bell as they trade barbs and snipe back-and-forth over how they view the battles taking place on-track. It’s a broadcast booth Buxton wants to feel like three ‘mates’ debating at a bar in a way that makes those at home feel like they’re a part of the conversation.

Debates and conversations breed storylines and rivalries, he said, which as he’s seen in the F1 world drives interest from those outside the sport and begins to mold the drivers into genuine superstars on-track as well as off it. Only then, he said, can IndyCar start to reach its true potential.

“I want people, when they tune into an IndyCar race, to care deeply about the drivers on-track. When we roll to green, I want people to feel emotionally invested even in just one driver – someone they really care about and who they really want to do well,” he said. “We have to tell those stories and create heroes out of these incredible daredevils on-track.”

Buxton is aware of the segment of the fanbase who see his F1 background and scoff at the idea of a voice of a sport that has long been accused of looking at IndyCar as ‘lesser than’ coming to America and manning the mic for a sport they’ve loved for decades. There are those, too, who question the idea of someone coming from a pundit's role and hitting the right levels of excitement and gravitas as a play-by-play man.

For someone who never thought he’d work in motorsports, let alone a broadcast booth in the United States – “I keep waiting for someone to turn around and say, ‘Get a proper job,’” he says – Buxton’s lack of comfort in his new gig may be his greatest strength.

Even seven years into his F1TV gig – one he says he’s still open to returning to in a part-time role once the IndyCar season ends in August – Buxton says he still finds himself on the brink of being sick as the producer in his ear counts him down before the camera lights flicker on. As the pressure builds as the 11 rows of three make their way around Turn 4 to take the green come May, Buxton truly believes that weight will bring out his best work.

“Am I match fit for the commentary booth? No, I’m not. Will I be going into this as prepared as I possibly could be? No, I won’t, but I don’t think you ever can be 100% because that’s the joy of live TV. It’s a drug that keeps you coming back,” he said. “I always feel incredibly nervous before I go on-air, and if you don’t, I think there’s something wrong, because if you aren’t nervous, you don’t care, and I care deeply about creating an enjoyable experience for people.

“This was a very quick decision, albeit a tough decision, because it’s a big step out of the comfy seat, but it’s the kind of thing I couldn’t turn down. I love this series. I love its drivers. I love the excitement of it - the race craft, the speeds, the energy of it. It’s such a visceral championship, and I just adore it, and to have the opportunity to help shape it as it moves to Fox was something I couldn’t turn down.”