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See the full story · 2 sourcesJack Harvey has straddled racing in the Indy 500 and being a pit reporter for FOX Sports.
FOX Sports
Now in his second year as an IndyCar pit reporter for FOX Sports, Jack Harvey continues to grow on the broadcast side while still working a seat for the Indianapolis 500. After his trial by fire in 2025, he’s taking his driver mentality to being in front of the camera.
Harvey has just returned from Dallara and the first views of the next-gen IR28 chassis that will make its way onto the grid in 2028. After 14 years, IndyCar will move forward on the new design and he’s there as a driver but also gaining insight that will serve him in his other role as IndyCar pit reporter for FOX Sports. In a day when outsized egos rule the sports landscape, Harvey is humble, upbeat and engaging.
His introduction to the broadcast side of things was a crash course in 2025. So how has it all played out as the IndyCar series hits the Portland stop on the 2026 schedule?
“I mean, honestly, from a broadcasting side, it's been what feels like the longest fast journey that I've ever been on,” Harvey said in an exclusive interview with me for Forbes. “I don't think I've felt that much of a rookie since I was go-karting when I was nine years old.”
Being a veteran IndyCar driver, Harvey has a leg up on the language around the sport, but he says even in the FOX Sports production meetings, there'd be moments where people were using abbreviations that he’d wished he’d known sooner and that he’s using his patience to just let things organically come together versus trying to go out and just learn as much as he can quickly and implement it.
“I think realistically, a lot of the bigger things I've learned is the ability to just relax, be conversational, and understand that yes, the camera's there, but you're not talking to the camera, but you're still trying to connect with people through it,” Harvey says. “And I think last year, because it was so new to me – it wasn't intentionally robotic because I'm not robotic in life – I just so wanted it to go well that sometimes I would have these questions and stats that I knew and I wanted to get out, but maybe it wasn't the most organic moment.”
Like the racer he is, you learn from examining your past races, and Harvey has applied that mentality to the broadcast side. Having the whole off season after 2025, he went back through and watched the each race broadcast and evaluated his performance. “How did I say things, what did I want to say, how could I have said it better? Again, it's no different than when you're actually in the car reviewing a race weekend. So I think that the ability to improve and to just try and improve is actually very natural because I've spent it my whole life just looking at driving side opposed to broadcasting side.”
Harvey’s deal with FOX Sports is unique. While he doesn’t have a fulltime seat for the series, he still is very much in play for the Indy 500. In 2025, one week he’s running up and down the pit lane doing interviews, the next week he’s in the seat turning laps.
And his 2025 run at Indy was not without drama. During one of the open practice sessions, the car caught fire. After he went from being the pit reporter leading up to the Indy 500 to being interviewed.
So, it begged the question: after being a pit reporter, did he learn things on how one approaches answering questions in an emotional moment?
“I mean, when I'm back in the car for the 500, obviously I'm coming at it then from a driver’s perspective, but I do see how people present themselves on TV,“ Harvey said, adding that drivers have an opportunity to present themselves that elevates their personality. He used the case of his car being on fire in that practice session as an example.
“So then suddenly I'm the one on that side of it,” he says in reference to the pit lane interview after the incident. “We’ve got a car on fire, and you’re not going to just deliver a boring answer. Obviously, the car caught on fire. So, overall, I just think you get to see the opportunities when people can show their personalities.”
One of the lesser-discussed aspects of the IndyCar series is the transition from the entire month of May in Indianapolis and the incredible spectacle of the Indy 500 to immediately shifting gears the next week and racing in Detroit. For Harvey, it has twice the impact given one second he’s in racer mode, and the next week back to being a pit reporter. Having now done it in 2025 and 2026, the transition hit differently over the two years.
“Last year wasn’t too hard because I think being a driver was still such second nature, and broadcasting was the newer experience for me,” says Harvey. “That jumping back into the seat and jumping out of it last year, actually, I found easier. Fast forward a year, where I've been doing more broadcasting and less being a driver, I actually found that a little bit harder this year. The run-up to the 500 team meetings is obviously a bit more frequent, a bit more time-consuming. But this year, I did find it a little bit harder to just be like, ‘Okay, I'm done with that. I'm doing this,’ and then actually getting ramped back up into broadcasting again. And in Detroit, because it was that weekend after, and you know everyone's tired – not just the drivers, but everyone involved is completely exhausted – and I'm going back into pit lane. I felt a little bit like I was in a Detroit hangover, you know. Truthfully, I'm not sure that Detroit was my best weekend broadcasting. I've spoken to my pit lane producer, the race producer, and director Jacob Allman, and I said, ‘Hey, can you just watch Detroit and let me know?’ And they're like, ‘You were you were you were great. Like, why didn't you think it was good?’ It was, truthfully, something that I hadn't anticipated because I found it so easy last year.”
Harvey realizes that he’...
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