Keanu Reeves made his professional car racing debut on Saturday. The 60-year-old actor participated in the Toyota GR Cup in Indianapolis this weekend, where he finished a respectable 25th out of 35 cars in his first race.
At one point during the race, the Speed star spun off into the grass at the exit of turn nine but managed to recover without a collision. He was able to re-enter the track after signaling that he wasn’t injured. Additionally, he successfully avoided a first-lap crash at turn 14.
Keanu Reeves climbed as high as 21st place at one point during the race. The Matrix actor, who qualified 31st out of the 35 cars, is set for a second race on Sunday. He is driving the No. 92 BRZRKR car, which promotes his new graphic novel, The Book of Elsewhere, and is teamed up with Cody Jones from Dude Perfect.
While this marks Keanu’s first professional race, he previously participated in a celebrity race at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, where he won the event in 2009.
In a recent interview, Keanu shared a bizarre incident where his knee “cracked like a potato chip” after he tripped on a piece of carpet while filming Good Fortune.
During his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he explained, “I was filming a scene with Aziz Ansari and Seth Rogen. We were in a cold plunge, and I was loving it.
After we finished the scene, you know how it is when you’re cold and you start shuffling? I had on a bathing suit and a towel, and I put it over my head and did the cold shuffle.”
“I’m doing the cold shuffle in this room that had protective carpets down and then, just here, there was like a little pocket, and my foot got caught in the pocket in the shuffle, and then I went [down], but [my knee] didn’t follow.
“And then, in slow motion, I went falling. My arms came out, but then my knee failed because it’s got some stuff, and I spiked it. And my patella – kneecap – cracked like a potato chip.”
At first, Keanu thought he was fine after the fall, but he later realized something was wrong when his knee started “blowing up.” He joked, “Comedy’s hard, man.”
Despite the injury, he continued working on the film, but his co-star and director, Aziz Ansari, later shared that they had to delay a scene involving salsa dancing until Keanu’s injury had healed.
