Danica Patrick and Tony Stewart surprisingly join FOX's Indy 500 broadcast team

Racing icons Danica Patrick and Tony Stewart will join FOX Sports' Indy 500 booth for the 109th running of the race on May 25. FOX made the official announcement on Thursday morning (May 15).

Reports of Patrick joining FOX's Indy 500 TV team had emerged towards the end of April. IndyCar reporter Tony Donohue shared a post on X, sharing how the former IndyCar and NASCAR driver would be covering the qualifying and race weekends.

FOX made the official confirmation on Thursday, also announcing 1997 IndyCar champion Tony Stewart as Danica Patrick's co-presenter for the pre-race show. Veteran FOX broadcaster Chris Myers will complete the trio.

Patrick and Stewart have been professionally acquainted for a long time. They met when the former joined the NASCAR Cup Series part-time in 2012 to race for Stewart-Haas Racing, which was co-owned by the now-NHRA Top Fuel driver. The partnership struck gold in the second year in 2013, as Danica Patrick won pole position for the Daytona 500, becoming the first woman to do so.

She spent her entire Cup Series career with Tony Stewart's team. In 2015, the former IndyCar driver surpassed Janet Guthrie's record of most Top 10 finishes by a woman in the Cup Series.

After retiring from professional racing in 2018, Patrick switched to the broadcasting side of racing. It began well with the F1's 2021 US Grand Prix, but went downhill when fans found her opinions to be too controversial. She had been covering the Indy 500 for NBC for five years before joining FOX this year.

Josef Newgarden has won the last two Indy 500s and is going after an unprecedented third win on May 25. Watching his attempt at rewriting IndyCar history will be 7-time champions Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR) and Tom Brady (NFL), who will grace the 'Fastest Seat in Sports' before the race.

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Danica Patrick and Tony Stewart's heroics as drivers at the Indy 500

Tony Stewart with Danica Patrick at the 57th Annual Daytona 500 - Practice - Source: Getty

Both Danica Patrick and Tony Stewart have Indy 500 records or a part of it that no other driver in racing history has achieved. On her debut at the Greatest Spectacle of Racing in 2005, Patrick recorded multiple firsts for a woman.

She qualified in fourth position, the best-ever for a woman, and was in contention to win the fabled race if not for a shortage of fuel. Nonetheless, she led 19 laps of the race and finished in fourth position, again, the best finish recorded by a woman at the Indy 500. She shattered her own record in 2009 by finishing P3 on the podium with Andretti Autosport.

Though Tony Stewart has never finished the Indy 500 higher than P5, he took pole position on debut at the 1996 edition of the race. However, a record bigger than that is his conquering of 'The Double'. He is the only driver in racing history to complete all 1100 miles of the Indy 500 and NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day Weekend.