What does it take to turn downtown D.C. into a racetrack?
An estimated 140,000 fans will gather to watch IndyCars travel at rates that more than quintuple the speed limit in downtown D.C., zooming past the U.S. Capitol, museums and monuments. It’ll be a high-speed spectacle the city may never see again.
Liam Griffin and Matt Delaney got an inside look at the National Mall’s transformation into a racetrack, speaking with Bud Denker, president of Penske Corporation, Jonathan Bailey, president of operations at Penske Corp. and IndyCar driver Marcus Ericsson.
[DELANEY] Right now, we’re standing at the starting line of the first ever high-speed motor race to be held on the National Mall. IndyCar drivers will be reaching top speeds of close to 180 miles per hour and racing a symbolic 250 miles across this very spot.
[GRIFFIN] Streets are being torn open, manhole covers have to be welded down, and you can see behind us, workers are currently constructing massive grandstands all to make this event possible.
[DELANEY] So today we’re taking you on a journey to see what goes into making this one-of-a-kind circuit, including talking to the designer of the track and a former IndyCar 500 winner, all to answer one question: what does it take to turn downtown D.C. into a racetrack?
This is the Freedom 250 Grand Prix track. It consists of seven turns that run counterclockwise for about 1.7 miles. The race starts here on Third Street Northwest, directly across from the U.S. Capitol building. Since this is the first ever high-speed motor race to take place within the National Mall, drivers will be zooming past major landmarks, including the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Air and Space Museum, and the Museum of the American Indian.
The pit lane is located here, along Pennsylvania Avenue, on the track’s longest straightaway. There are two large grandstands being built for this event: the Delta 250 Suites overlooking the Capitol building, and the Champions Club and Monument Suites with views of the Washington Monument. These are both located within the Stripes ticket area, located on the inside of the track circuit. The fan zone outside of the circuit is the Stars ticket area. There are four bridges being built from scratch to allow fans to enter and exit the fan zone on the inside of the track.
At each turn of the racetrack, we’re going to share with you insights on how this event came together.
[DENKER] Most people said it could never be done, right? So I had a lot of skeptics. I’ve faced challenges before, business deals, this deal, the biggest of my life.
[DELANEY] This is Bud Denker, president of Penske Corporation. We met up with Bud on Constitution Avenue, just down the street from Turn 1. Of all the people and organizations bringing this event together, Bud seemed to be in the middle of it all.
[DENKER] This was once the racetrack, but I originally came to Washington, D.C. I designed the track to go up Constitution Avenue to First, and then down to Independence. It required a congressional bill. But in the end, I could not get the votes in the Senate. And then I called Secretary Duffy and I said, I’m pulling the plug on it tomorrow. He said, don’t do that. Give me a couple days to kind of get back to you. The next day, he said to me, Bud, come back here and design a racetrack off Capitol grounds. And if you do that, we can maybe give you an executive order. Typically, these take two years to put on and organize and design and get it going because you’ve got construction, you’ve got disruption, you’ve got permits. I have 1,300 pages of permits to put this event on. So I came back the next day, and I say by God’s will, I saw a racetrack in two hours.
[GRIFFIN] The executive order from President Trump came 204 days before race weekend. The final course was revealed just 166 days before the first on-track session.
We got the chance to speak with Jonathan Bailey, vice president of operations at Penske Corporation.
[BAILEY] Ten days away, you know, on the ticker.
[GRIFFIN] Jonathan oversaw hundreds of workers who put the course together. From grandstand construction to security fencing and manhole welding, he’s in charge of it all.
[BAILEY] So 8 p.m. to 6 is our primary time that we come out and work. We got upwards of 30 different agencies that we’re working with right now. You’re looking at about a thousand people as this event starts wrapping up. You can see in the distance here we have roughly 150 tents going up, grandstands, the structure that we’re currently sitting in. They have nearly 100 people working on this structure and the tight timeline that we have.
[DELANEY] Turn two connects Pennsylvania Avenue with 9th Street for a left-hand turn. The almost half-mile stretch is probably gonna be the fastest section of the course where drivers are gonna be hitting their top speeds.
[GRIFFIN] Coming away from the Capitol building behind me, that’s gonna be a top speed like Matt said, but also with this tight 90-degree turn, they’re gonna be slamming on their brakes, that’s gonna open up some opportunities.
[DELANEY] And the drivers actually get a special privilege here on the course because us regular drivers do not get to take left-hand turns from Pennsylvania to 9th Street.
How much of the pavement and kind of just the general streetscape was already race day ready for you guys? And what kind of modifications did you have to make to get it to that point?
[BAILEY] Yeah, so about 65 or 70 percent was already ready. Working with DDOT, whose roads they are, they came out and identified some ruts. We got crews going out looking at the manholes.
[DENKER] There’s 220 manhole covers on the racetrack, and every one of them have to be welded down. Why? Because our cars will suck that manhole cover off of it because there’s so much downforce.
Remember that 4,000 pounds of downforce? Yeah. This manhole cover would be sucked off if they weren’t welded down. You see the walls going up here. This is the work my team has done. An amazing crew of people put these walls and fence up.
This will obviously keep the cars from going anywhere they shouldn’t be going.
[BAILEY] Concrete barrier wall that protects the actual track or on both sides, driver’s left, driver’s right, you’re at 1800 block. So all these blocks were made locally here. Perimeter fence, the stuff that protects the folks from the track, you’re looking at close to 50,000 linear feet of fence that we’re putting to protect our track itself.
[GRIFFIN] We are here at turn three, one of the more technical areas of this track. Drivers are going to be coming down 9th Street, turning left onto Constitution Avenue, but they’re only going to have a very short area to accelerate between turn two and turn three, so being very precise is going to be crucial here.
[DELANEY] Sounds like an exciting section of the track.
[GRIFFIN] Yeah, it should be.
Watch the video for the full conversation, including more with Bud Denker, Jonathan Bailey and IndyCar driver Marcus Ericsson.
Read more: Racers, organizers finalize Freedom 250 Grand Prix preparations
Read more from Liam Griffin and Matt Delaney
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