Frankie Muniz is telling fans that he’s “okay” after a scary multi-vehicle pile-up in his latest NASCAR race left him limping to an ambulance off the track.
The crash, termed a “hard hit” by sports reporter Noah Lewis on X, happened Friday, November 8, at the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship Race in Phoenix. Video shows Muniz in apparent pain and limping away from the wreckage, then being assisted into an ambulance.
However, speaking to reporters following the race, Muniz assured that he was fine. “I’m okay, yeah,” he noted, calling the incident on track “unfortunate.”
“I felt like got a good opportunity to run with some guys, I made some passes. Lost a few spots on restarts, then went back out and passed them again,” he said of his racing technique. “So it was good for me to figure out how to get by people. You know, I haven’t really gotten to do that much this year so that was really positive.”
Hard hit for @frankiemuniz. He limps from his truck to the ambulance. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/7rngEwzMzE
— Noah Lewis (@Noah_Lewis1) November 9, 2024
Muniz, 38. best known for his titular role in the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle and who has been acting since he was a kid, first broke into car racing in 2004 during a celebrity event. Two years later, he made his professional racing debut. He collected one top-five finish and 11 top-ten finishes in the ARCA Menards Series in 2023. After totaling all his points for the year, Muniz finished in fourth place.
Last month, the actor revealed that he planned to make race car driving his main gig. “I’m extremely excited to announce that I will be racing full time next season in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series,” Muniz, 38, announced during the Fox & Friends broadcast on October 22.
Muniz noted at the time that it wasn’t a “hard decision” to turn his focus on racing instead of acting.
“This is something that I’ve been working [toward] for literally 20 years when I did my first race,” Muniz said of racing. “That feeling of crossing the finish line first in that pro-celebrity race, was an incredible, incredible feeling and I’ve been chasing that.”
He noted, “If I’m going to do this, I want to dedicate myself to it 100 percent. I’m doing everything I can to be prepared for the races and be the best race car driver I can be.”
In addition to acting and now racing, Muniz is a dedicated husband and father. He married Paige Price in October 2019. The couple welcomed their son, Mauz, in March 2021.
Muniz’s role as a father has only added to his desire to race over acting. “A lot of the reason why I went back [to] racing [was] because I wanted him to grow up actually seeing me work hard and strive for a goal and not just be like, ‘Oh, I used to be this actor,’” he exclusively told Us Weekly earlier this month.
