IndyCar’s Josef Newgarden had no idea who the RHOSLC actor was during the Cameo

Regardless of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City fangirling at his looks, IndyCar driver Joseph Newgarden was left confused after appearing on the Bravo reality series.

Newgarden, 34, made an appearance on a November 2024 episode of the show, in which Bronwyn Newport treated the actor to a trip to an IndyCar race in Thermal, Calif., outside Palm Springs. After Newgarden met the Housewives on the runway, Newport called her “the cutest” and cast member. Lisa Barlow shouted, “Take off your shirt!”

The women even tried to create Newgarden with a single cast Heather Gaybut it was said that Newgarden is married to his wife, Ashley Welchand that the couple has a 2-year-old son wasteful.

“I didn’t even know what was going on,” Newgarden admitted in an exclusive interview with Us Weekly “I’m serious, that’s the way these things happen. We are on the track, we are in this race. Someone walks into our engineering office and says, ‘Hey, there’s some people here, there’s some guests. Can you come out and say hi please?’”

Newgarden continued, “I went out and said hi to everybody. They say, ‘You’re going to be filmed, so don’t worry about it.’ I’m like, ‘OK, no problem.’ And then you don’t hear anything about it for a few months, right? And then I get all these texts when the show comes on. I don’t know this show. I haven’t seen it.”

Driver “had no idea” his interaction with the Housewives would be featured on the show, but called them “super sweet.”

After the episode aired, Newgarden joked about the surprising demographic that most responded to his Bravo debut.

“You know what was funny? You get texts from men,” Newgarden said. “It’s all men. Every text message was from a guy and they said, ‘I was watching with my wife,’ or, ‘My wife had it on TV and I noticed you you were there. That’s kind of cool.’ I got about 20 texts like that. I thought it was really funny.”

Outside of his new found homemakers fame, Newgarden is also the face of IndyCar’s inaugural season on Fox, which officially begins on March 2. Newgarden is featured in a splashy ad to promote the collaboration, which highlights Newgarden’s chiseled jawline and features a shot of Tom Brady.

For Newgarden, being in such an important place for IndyCar is not something he takes lightly.

“I care about growing the sport, just being a competitor and loving IndyCar,” he said. “I want to see him reach the highest heights he can. I remember when I was younger, IndyCar used to be a household name in North America. It reached beyond America. It was a global sport. I think it can go back to that point.”

Newgarden added, “I’m deeply interested in its representation and how it’s perceived. I think Fox is really going to capture the essence of what IndyCar is, the feel-good factor of it. Because it has always been there. It’s just a matter of exposure.”

Fox’s coverage of the 2025 IndyCar season begins with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in St. Petersburg, Florida on Sunday, March 2.