Written by Archie O’Reilly
“It’s all Hinch’s fault,” Will Buxton recalls.
The setting is a dinner in São Paulo, where Buxton is alongside former IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe as the pair fulfill their F1 TV duties for the 2024 Brazilian Grand Prix.
It is a month-and-a-half removed from the IndyCar season by this point. And with the series switching broadcast deals from NBC Sports to FOX Sports in the off-season, driver-turned-analyst Hinchcliffe is temporarily out of a job.
“How are the negotiations going?” Buxton asks over dinner. Merely casual conversation, it would seem.
“Yeah, good. Are you set for next year?” Hinchcliffe replies, turning the chat back to Buxton. “How’s everything going with F1?”
Hinchcliffe’s stellar work with NBC has led to him becoming a regular F1 TV panelist at the conclusion of the IndyCar season. It has allowed the rekindling of a bond with Buxton that goes all the way back to Hinchliffe’s days involved with the former nation-based A1 Grand Prix championship.
As the pair continue to talk over a Brazilian dinner, it transpires that Buxton actually is not yet officially set for an eighth year with F1.
“Okay, that’s interesting,” Hinchcliffe remarks.
“Why is it interesting?” Buxton asks.
It transpires Buxton’s name actually came up in a meeting Hinchliffe had been involved with about IndyCar’s revamped coverage.
“Shut up. It didn’t?” Buxton says. “What? Like presenter? Pit reporter?”
But it was neither. Despite Buxton having not filled such a role in over a decade, FOX were actually showing interest in his services as their play-by-play, lead commentator.
“Suddenly my ears pricked up,” Buxton recalls of the conversation. “And I was like: ‘Okay, tell me more.’ And we chatted and, at that point, we plotted out how will the next three-to-five years of our lives look if that came to be. And I was suddenly really excited.”
Buxton’s agent had already been talking to FOX since the announcement was made last June that IndyCar would be transitioning away from NBC. But after conversing with Buxton, it was Hinchliffe who helped to organise a meeting to pick things up again.
Buxton’s first call with FOX came three weeks after São Paulo in Las Vegas, which hosted the third-last round of the F1 season.
“It was pretty clear, literally from the first five minutes of the call, that they were taking everything in a direction that massively appealed to me,” Buxton says. “Seemingly I appealed to them and there was just this synergy from the first second.
“From that point on, I think it was clear to me that I had a pretty big decision to make.”
It was not until a little into the new year that Buxton signed with FOX. An announcement that he would be the lead announcer - alongside NBC stalwarts Hinchcliffe and Townsend Bell in the commentary box - was made by mid-January.
Buxton’s desire to work in IndyCar is not a new thing. In 2010, he became F1 pit lane reporter for SPEED in the United States, which was part of the FOX family. But upon SPEED losing the rights to NBC at the end of 2012, Buxton was uncertain as to whether he had a future working in F1.
“I went to Sonoma that year and the sole objective that weekend was trying to pivot and make my way out to IndyCar,” he says. “It didn’t quite work out then. It’s taken a decade and a bit longer but here we are.”
Buxton was ultimately brought onboard at NBC in 2013 to continue as an F1 reporter, though this did also allow a foray into the IndyCar world through an opportunity to serve as a pit reporter across various races.
After five years with NBC, coinciding with Liberty Media’s takeover of F1, Buxton then moved in-house at F1 in a presenting role, which evolved into wide-ranging involvement as one of the faces of F1 TV.
So why, with Buxton now recognised worldwide for his F1 coverage, including serving as a key figure on the popular Drive to Survive Netflix series, has he decided to move to IndyCar, a series with much less global recognition?
“Precisely that,” he says. “Much less recognition than it deserves.
“I’ve been a massive fan of IndyCar, I can’t even tell you how long. I think my first time watching IndyCar would have been when [Nigel] Mansell went across in the early 90s as F1 World Champion.
“I used to stay up late at night and try and watch the races and not let my parents hear the fact that I was watching TV way later than I should have done because I should have been going to sleep and going to school the next morning.”
Buxton has now been involved in motorsport for nearly 25 years. But throughout that time, he has been unable to ignore the “phenomenal racing” in IndyCar.
“Formula One is right at the peak of how popular it’s ever been and that trajectory is only on the upward path,” Buxton says. “And so a lot of people will ask: ‘Why leave? Why leave now?’
“I consider myself incredibly lucky that I’ve been able to walk away while I was still in love with the sport and be able to actually leave of my own volition and of my own decision and at a time that feels right for me.
“And to step into something that I’m hugely hugely excited about and genuinely is a dream come true - something I never thought I would ever have the opportunity to do… one, work in IndyCar; two, get back into the commentary box.
“Those two things combined with the direction that FOX is taking, the impetus they’re putting behind it, it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. I couldn’t say no.”
For Buxton, this is a familiar career position in which he finds himself in many ways - and one that he relishes. Formula One was far from its current stature stateside when Buxton worked for US-based SPEED and NBC, and it has undergone emphatic growth since.
IndyCar now finds itself in a similar position of being significantly undervalued versus the product that it actually exhibits. A key part of Buxton’s work will be selling the allure of IndyCar to motorsport fans that continue to overlook its dormant splendour.
“I’d say: ‘Do you like Formula One?’ And when they say ‘yes’, I’d say: ‘Now imagine it with overtaking. And that’s IndyCar,’” Buxton says.
“I don’t mean to make Formula One sound bad; Formula One is incredible and it’s renowned throughout the world as the pinnacle of motorsport. And a lot of that has to do with the technical ingenuity that goes into it. It is as much a technical challenge as it is a driving challenge.
“IndyCar for me is more about the driving challenge and the fact that, on any given weekend, any one of 27 drivers can win that race. And you don’t know, when you roll to green, which driver that’s going to be.”
The rawness of the series, its vast unpredictability and the fact that drivers’ skill sets make the difference all appeal massively to Buxton. As they should to any racing fan or sporting fan.
But while the inner circle of the racing world knows of the wonder of IndyCar, the secret remains largely unspilled.
“It doesn’t matter what paddock you work in - any racing championship on earth - if you asked anyone in those paddocks: ‘Where’s the greatest racing on earth?’ Other than Mazda MX-5 Cup, they will tell you it’s IndyCar,” Buxton says.
“It’s like the world’s greatest secret - the world of motor racing’s greatest secret anyway. No one will say it on the record because they want to promote their own championship, but everybody in racing knows that IndyCar has the best racing.”
The task now, and a huge part of Buxton and FOX’s work, is to share the secret. Because there is no reason why IndyCar should continue to be such an unknown.
“I guarantee you, you watch one IndyCar race, you’re hooked for life,” Buxton says. “Because it’s incredible. All we need to do is get people to watch one race and hopefully they just keep coming back week in, week out.
“And it’s not an either or scenario. There is enough space within everyone’s motor racing heart to watch more than one championship.”
A major part of F1’s growth came from tapping into a completely new demographic and generation of fans. And while there may be a trend in the right direction, IndyCar continues to lack the interest from a significant portion of a new generation of fans.
But there is every chance that, with the right promotion and exposure, IndyCar can tap into those who have come to love F1 in recent years.
“I would really hope that this new generation of fan who has fallen in love with Formula One, and because of that open-wheel racing, will take a look at IndyCar and say: ‘You know what? I need to give this a go. I need to go and see what this is all about,’” Buxton says.
“Because I guarantee they’ll love it. We have this massive opportunity and we have this undiscovered diamond in the rough. And it’s our job to tell the world about how brilliant it is.
“IndyCar is at the space that Formula One was 10, 15 years ago. All it needs is the right promotion. All it needs is the right kick in the pants. And you get people on board to watch it and there’s no limit to how big it can get - in the United States and then growing globally.
“Our objective is not just to take it back to where it was in the nineties, not just to take it back to its heyday, but to go beyond that and to make it more popular than it’s ever been.”
A pivotal part of F1’s growth was taking fans behind the visor. A significant part of IndyCar’s untapped potential, which is starting to be amended with FOX’s array of driver-specific commercials, has been failing to tell enough of the story behind a diverse spread of personalities in the field.
“You try and get an F1 driver to do a commercial or whatever, they hate it,” Buxton says. “They’re the most famous drivers in the world and they hate the limelight. IndyCar drivers, every single one of them, they love it. They’re trained for it and they’re so good on camera.
“They have personalities and that’s key. And every one of them is unique. So our job, along with telling the story of the race, is to tell the story of the people and to make people care.
“That’s what I want to do: when we roll a green every Sunday, whether you love or hate them, I want you to care; I want you to have an emotional investment in at least one of those drivers.”
Buxton recounts a recent conversation about this topic with two-time series champion and back-to-back defending Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden, who has become a polarising figure over the years.
“I said: ‘We want them to love you guys.’ And Josef went: ‘Yeah… or hate,’” Buxton says. “These guys are willing to embrace that. If you can embrace being the bad guy as well as being a good guy, that’s absolutely huge.”
The reality that Buxton has come to know is that people will probably care more about the racing if they know more about those who are on track.
“The thing that I’ve learned as well through doing Drive to Survive and stuff like that is it’s not just about the racing,” Buxton says. “The thing that really draws people in and really connects you to a driver is personal stories and is personality.
“When we roll to green, I want viewers to care. I want them to genuinely care about just one driver. That’s all I care about is just getting them to love or hate one driver.”
It is not to be taken lightly when Buxton likens IndyCar’s current, under-the-radar state to F1’s situation a decade or so ago. This is someone that has been front and centre and witnessed the ascension first hand in his role with the series.
Buxton was there from the beginning as Liberty took over and subsequently transformed the sport’s popularity. He was a part of key meetings and particularly a timely switch towards there being a focus on digital media in a bid to grow the sport.
“Before Drive to Survive was even a thing, Formula One had already set in place a path of how they were going to increase eyeballs on the sport,” Buxton says. “There are a lot of learnings from those years and what Liberty has done with Formula One that we can take and we can transpose over to IndyCar.”
Better than anyone, Buxton knows that Drive to Survive was not the sole reason behind F1’s growth, as it is sometimes credited.
“Obviously there’s a recognition of that and it played a massive part,” he says. “But putting it solely down to that fails to recognise the tremendous work that went on behind the scenes at Formula One when Liberty took over.
“First and foremost to create a communications department that didn’t exist before, a marketing department that didn’t exist before and, critically from my perspective because I was right in the heart of it, a digital department, which never existed.
“There was no YouTube channel, there was no Twitter account… there was nothing. It didn’t exist.
“Liberty made all that happen and engaged with a rapidly-evolving social media landscape and recognised also that in an era where a lot of Formula One was behind a paywall, the way to get new eyeballs was to appeal to social media by giving people just enough that it made them want to tune in and made them want to watch.”
Now in 2025, the situation is different. Every major sporting league has a presence across all popular social media platforms and a steady stream of content on YouTube.
“But the basics and the base element of putting it in front of people in order to create a new audience, that’s something that can be followed and can be learned from,” Buxton adds.
“As we’ve seen with other sports which just thought a Drive to Survive is all we need, they very quickly realised it wasn’t. They needed more.”
Drive to Survive benefitted from the COVID-19 pandemic, appealing in its infancy to people craving a connection with something. These racing drivers, portrayed as real-life superheroes, gave people something to relate to.
It was a perfect storm.
“That combination of factors is not going to happen again,” Buxton recognises. “So you’re dealing with a different playing field now. You have to think differently and you have to go about things differently. You can’t just follow the same playbook and expect it to reap the same rewards.”
And FOX is, so far, going against the grain in terms of what IndyCar has been used to. Promotion has not been limited to the Indianapolis 500 or solely the on-track product, instead using fun, edgy and engaging advertising to tell the stories of the series’ star drivers.
With the broadcast deal itself, every single IndyCar race will be on network television for the very first time. Not only is that unparalleled in IndyCar, it is scarcely matched in US sport.
“Now, there are only two sports in the United States that will be played out exclusively on network television in 2025: the NFL and IndyCar,” Buxton says. “That is absolutely massive and that is a huge sign of FOX’s belief in this championship and what FOX wants to do with this championship.”
Having IndyCar commercials repeatedly playing during FOX’s Super Bowl coverage in multi-million-dollar advertisement slots further reinforced FOX’s investment in their new product. They are not putting half-baked efforts into this.
“That’s no small investment to do that,” Buxton says. “And those are just the tip of the iceberg. The team that they’ve assembled to work behind the scenes, to direct, to produce the shows is one of the most talented, one of the most experienced that I’ve ever seen.
“I can genuinely tell you I’ve had more meetings this year in six or seven weeks of 2025 I think than I did in the entirety of 2024 in terms of production meetings and spitballing ideas. And it’s great because there’s no such thing as a stupid idea.
“You have a huge group of people who have worked in a variety of sports and a variety of motorsports and on a variety of networks all coming together with one sole objective, which is to make this thing bigger and better and more popular than it’s ever been.”
A new television partner will mean a fresh look on-screen. Buxton has seen the graphics package that FOX are bringing and believes it is new territory for IndyCar broadcasting - both through their boldness and helping viewers to understand certain nuances.
“They’re awesome,” he says. “They’re very FOX. They’re very in keeping with their vibe, their feel of how they present motorsport. There are some really great new pieces that will come in - graphics that you haven’t seen before on an IndyCar broadcast.
“[It lets] the folks at home understand more about what’s going on in the cockpit, what’s going on with strategy, how the races evolve. And they’re big, they’re colorful - you’re not going to get confused as to who’s where and who’s who and who’s in what car and what tyres they’re running.
“The first time it pops up, people are going to take a step back and go: ‘Wow. Okay, I wasn’t expecting that from an IndyCar broadcast. That’s cool.’”
On a personal note for Buxton, there is little more exciting than the prospect of getting to commentate on his first Indy 500. And it is a first for him in every sense of the word.
“It’s going to be incredibly emotional,” he says. “I don’t think I’m prepared for it at all. I don’t think you can ever be prepared for the enormity of not just calling your first Indy 500, but I will be attending my first Indy 500. Doing those two things together, that’s insane.”
Buxton will have the full Month of May experience as he moves over to Indianapolis for the month given IndyCar is on track for five successive weekends. The plan is to make the month a family affair for the Buxtons.
He plans to still be based out of the United Kingdom for the first year, splitting the season into eight different trips - including the longer stay in Indianapolis and a further extended stay, possibly in Florida or Los Angeles, for a stretch of five races in four weekends in July.
“Honestly, eight international flights a year - compared to 24 [in F1] - that’s easy,” Buxton says. “I’m all good with eight. That’s pretty good for me.”
The plethora of storylines that Buxton will be at the heart of telling also excite him. As does his return to the commentary box and getting to know a new team of people sharing the experience of this new venture together.
“The greatest joy I can take from broadcasting is the joy of working with a phenomenal team and bringing every member of that team with you and then growing and developing and lifting everybody and improving from weekend to weekend,” he says.
“We’re the extra team in the pit lane. The person holding the microphone is the driver - they’re the one that the camera’s on and the focus is on - but they don’t go on air without every single member of that team being absolutely incredible at the job that they do.”
It is a long time since Buxton was enlisted to commentate on the global GP2 and GP3 broadcasts. A father to a nearly-15-year-old and 18-month-old, Buxton likens slotting back into the booth to parenting.
“I remember when my youngest daughter was born that I was freaking out about lack of sleep and changing nappies and all the things I hadn’t done in over a decade,” he says. “And it turns out that it’s kind of muscle memory.
“When you love something that much, it happens naturally. So I’m hoping that’s going to be the same way with commentary. Genuinely, my times in the commentary box were my happiest years in motorsport. I absolutely loved that time.
“It was very raw - I’d never had any training in commentary. It was just: ‘Have a microphone and off you go.’ But I had a lot of fun with it. I thought that maybe I’d pigeonholed myself now into role of presenter or pundit. To have this opportunity to go back to play-by-play is huge.
“It’s also a massive responsibility. And it’s a huge undertaking because it is something that I haven’t done for 10 years. Will there be chinks in the armor and will there be rust that I need to brush off? One hundred percent.”
Since being confirmed for the gig, Buxton has spent day upon day in front of a screen in his office formulating his own stats pages. Russ Thompson, a statistician who has long worked in IndyCar, including for NBC, has been a “go-to guy” for Buxton.
“Literally every day I’m sending him emails: ‘Oh, you know… I found an anomaly. Why is this pole position counted and this one isn’t? What happened here and what’s this?’” Buxton says. “I’ve gone through and I’ve done every single driver, every single team.
“When was their first race? When was their first podium? When was their first win? When was their last win? How many wins have they got? How many top 10s have they got?”
Buxton has wanted to make all of his own preparatory sheets rather than just latch off hand-fed statistics.
“I went to Russ and I was like: ‘Right, I’ve got the all-time records but I need to split these up now. I want the street and road course records and I want the oval records and then I want the records track-specific,’” he adds.
“I’m properly going into everything because I want to know everything. Am I going to know everything by the time we get to St. Pete? No. In six weeks, I’m never going to know everything. But hopefully I’m prepared enough and I’ve rammed enough statistics into my brain that I’ve got a few things up my sleeve. But it’s been a lot of work.”
Buxton has invested in a whole host of books to inform his historical knowledge and, when not fixated on his stats sheets or engulfed in a reading session, has been watching past races.
“I’ve been watching a lot of races back so that I can listen to Hinch and Townsend and listen to how they bounce off each other,” he says. “But then I have to be really careful not to listen too much to [NBC lead commentator Leigh Diffey]. It would be really, really easy for me to just slide into doing a very poor imitation of Diff. And that’s not what I want to do.”
The new booth dynamic has had one run-out - a mock broadcast session in Los Angeles in mid-February - before practice in St. Pete, which will also serve as practice for Buxton and company in its own right at the start of the first race weekend.
FOX afforded the trio the chance to run through some 2024 races to allow them to get up to speed together. They ran through part of one road course, one oval and one street course race.
Naturally as the season opener, it started with St. Pete. Then there was a first oval commentary experience for Buxton with last year’s Indy 500. The chosen road course race was Laguna Seca, with the exercise starting in the middle of what was, in Buxton’s words, “a convoluted split-strategy race”.
One of the biggest things for Buxton to get used to was the different liveries from race to race. And with all of his research geared towards 2025 and Hinchliffe and Bell already having called the races shown with 2024’s circumstances in mind, there was something of a minor disconnect there. But it was a very helpful experience.
“They didn’t tell us which [races] they were going to give us and they just just threw races at us,” Buxton said. “And it just meshed and it just felt natural and it felt great. I really enjoyed being back behind the mic and getting to call races.
“I was really worried about calling ovals and they threw me straight in with the Indy 500 and that took a few laps. But then your race brain and your commentary brain, it finds the right gear and suddenly you’re not just focusing on the fight that you’re looking at, you’re also looking at the fight that’s three, four packs back.”
Buxton has the benefit of having worked with both Hinchcliffe and Bell; the latter was with Buxton at SPEED, also giving him a two-seater ride around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during his time at NBC.
“We’ve all gone through a lot together,” Buxton says. “We know each other really well. From the first moment, it’s just been very, very easy.
“My comparison with changing nappies… am I comparing those two to a pair of toddlers? At times, possibly. But I don’t want to stand on them. I don’t want to get in the way of their banter. That’s a big part of what makes the broadcast so enjoyable.”
With Hinchcliffe and Bell famed for their disagreements but simultaneous commentary in the booth, Buxton knows what he has coming.
“Playing referee between those two will be very, very enjoyable,” Buxton says. “It’s almost [being] a mediator for this quarreling old couple - I have to be marriage counselling for those two.”
As he looks towards the future, Buxton only has one thing on his mind: IndyCar. Even after the IndyCar season concludes at the end of August, it is unlikely he will make any F1 cameos.
“This year, I don’t think so,” Buxton says. “I let them know about my decision before the announcement was made. I let Stefano [Domenicali, F1 CEO] know and I let the guys at F1 TV know and everyone has been absolutely lovely about it.
“I’ve given my entire professional life to Formula One and they’ve been very supportive, very sweet, very understanding and have said I’m always welcome back, which is lovely.”
After such a long time working in the sport, Buxton wants to enjoy just being an F1 fan again.
“I’m really looking forward to watching an F1 season as a fan and not having to worry about pissing anyone off by saying the wrong thing,” he says. “That’s going to be nice.”
Drive to Survive is a slightly different deal. Buxton does hope to be back given it is not contingent on him being in the F1 paddock. It has always been a fairly impromptu deal anyway.
“That would be great,” he says. “They’ve always shown me in the chair but never in the paddock so I guess the opportunity would still be there. To be decided but I’d love to. I’ve loved being a part of that series.
“Year on year, we’ve never agreed that I’d come back the next year and they’ve never asked if I’d come back the next year; they would give me a call and go: ‘Right, when are you getting in the chair for the first time?’
“So it’s not like we’re sitting on a rolling contract or anything like that. So I’ll wait for the call to go in and sit in the chair.”
Above anything, Buxton wants to be the best servant he can be for IndyCar. And he is in it for the long haul.
“For now I have a three-year deal with FOX and my hope is that that three-year deal will become five, 10… who knows?” he says.
“My objective very much is IndyCar. That is where I want to be and that is where I want to throw all of my effort right now, growing this incredible championship and making people fall in love with it.
“I had the most amazing opportunity over these last few years of helping people to fall in love with Formula One. I would love to be able to do that for IndyCar and bring people in and make them fall in love with this thing that we know is so incredible.”
From the first moment he heard about the opportunity over dinner in Brazil, Buxton knew his heart wanted IndyCar. It is now time that others’ hearts follow suit.
“People need to start watching it again first and recognise and realise how brilliant it is,” he says. “If you’re a fan of motor racing, then you’re going to love IndyCar. Just give it a go and I guarantee you’ll love it.”
