Josef Newgarden. Jason Mendez/Getty Photographs
Regardless of the Actual Housewives of Salt Lake Metropolis fangirling on the sight of him, IndyCar driver Josef Newgarden was left stumped after making an look on the Bravo actuality sequence.
Newgarden, 34, made a cameo on a November 2024 episode of the present, by which Bronwyn Newport handled the solid to a visit to an IndyCar race in Thermal, California, exterior Palm Springs. Upon Newgarden assembly the Housewives on the monitor, Newport known as him “the handsomest” and solid member Lisa Barlow yelled, “Take your shirt off!”
The ladies even tried establishing Newgarden with single solid member Heather Homosexual, however have been informed Newgarden is married to his spouse, Ashley Welch, and that the couple share 2-year-old son Kota.
“I didn’t even know what was taking place,” Newgarden admitted in an unique interview with Us Weekly “I’m severe, that is the best way these things occurs. We’re on the monitor, we’re at this race. Somebody pops into our engineering workplace and so they’re like, ‘Hey, there’s some individuals which might be right here, there’s some visitors. Are you able to please come out and say hello?’”
Newgarden continued, “I got here out and I mentioned hello to all people. They’re like, ‘They’re going to movie you, so don’t fear about it.’ I’m like, ‘OK, no drawback.’ And you then don’t hear something about it for a pair months, proper? After which I get all these texts when the present is on. I don’t know this present. I’ve not seen it.”
The driving force had “no thought” his interplay with the Housewives could be featured on the present, however known as them “tremendous candy.”
After the episode aired, Newgarden joked concerning the shocking demographic that responded essentially the most to his Bravo debut.
“ what was humorous? You get texts from husbands,” Newgarden mentioned. “It’s all males. Each textual content message was from a man and so they have been like, ‘I used to be watching with my spouse,’ or, ‘My spouse had it on TV and I seen you have been on there. That’s kinda cool.’ I bought like 20 texts like that. I believed it was actually humorous.”
Exterior of his newfound Housewives fame, Newgarden can also be the face of IndyCar’s inaugural season on Fox, which formally kicks off on March 2. Newgarden is featured in a flashy business to advertise the collaboration, which spotlights Newgarden’s chiseled jawline and options an look from Tom Brady.
For Newgarden, being in such a spot of prominence for IndyCar shouldn’t be one thing he takes flippantly.
“I care concerning the development of the game, simply being a competitor and loving IndyCar,” he mentioned. “I need to see it attain the very best highs it may. I keep in mind once I was youthful, IndyCar was a family title in North America. It reached past simply America. It was a worldwide sport. I believe it may get again to that time.”
Newgarden added, “I care deeply about its illustration and the best way it’s perceived. I believe Fox is actually going to seize the essence of what IndyCar is, the cool issue of it. As a result of it’s all the time been proper there. It’s only a matter of publicity.”
Fox’s protection of the 2025 IndyCar season begins with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Sunday, March 2.
