INDYCAR Freedom 250 Course In DC: A Complex Road To Completion

Washington — There's something about Washington that breeds bureaucracy.

Just to create a 1.7-mile racetrack, Penske Corporation needed 1,350 pages of permits. Compare that to 200 or so for a similar-sized course in Detroit.

And there in Detroit, the organizers would work with local and state police with a little bit of help from the FBI. Maybe 200 officers in total.

Washington? More than 500 National Guard will work the event, in addition to 1,300 Metro Police Department personnel, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms personnel, FBI, Capitol Police, U.S. Parks Police and the Secret Service.

Penske Corporation President Bud Denker, who has spent most of the last seven months living in Washington D.C., said he expects 140,000 people each day on Saturday and Sunday. What has been the biggest challenge since President Donald Trump signed the executive order in late January to make the event possible?

"Complexity in a compression of time," Denker told me as he drove me around in a parade car on the nearly completed course Wednesday morning. 

Such is the challenge for what INDYCAR hopes will be an epic event on Sunday — 147 laps (250 miles) on a course that includes Pennsylvania, Constitution and Independence Avenues.

"The places that we’re racing on [are] the three most important streets in our country," Denker said.

In order to have a 40-foot-wide racetrack and a pit road (with a 17-foot-wide pit box and two 11-foot-wide driving lanes) and the walls, they need a 91-foot-wide ride. 

Pennsylvania Avenue is 92 feet wide.

They had 288,000 requests for tickets, the bulk of which were free and will either be inside the track perimeter or in the National Mall area outside the perimeter. There will be approximately 70,000 fans on each side, and their tickets likely won't let them go both inside and outside the track perimeter. 

Denker estimates that 40 percent of the fans will come from outside the metro area, with many from the East Coast, where INDYCAR doesn’t have many races. 

While all street races disrupt local life, the fact that Congress is not in session and school is starting across America, means this is not as busy a time for hotels and restaurants, according to Denker.

The concrete barriers for the course were built in Fredericksburg, Virginia. There were 1,800 of them. The pit road walls, which were not as big, came from Chicago.

More than 200 manhole covers had to be welded and several had to be covered with a temporary surface because they were recessed into the street.

There was also one area from Independence to Maryland Avenue where they had to remove part of a median and take out a traffic light. Rarely would that be done at other tracks, Denker said. Adding to the complexity was the ownership of land that is part of the footprint, which includes various federal properties (such as the Smithsonian, federal office buildings, the National Mall) and city properties.

There are reports that Penske has spent $35 million on this race. Denker indicated it was more than that. They have massive three-story temporary suites that should rake in millions to help offset the costs, but they also spent a pretty penny on them. 

Typically, the temporary suites wouldn’t have restrooms built into them and they would be at the bottom of the structure. But these have them on each floor, at a cost of $1 million, according to Denker. 

They brought in viewing platforms from the Long Beach Grand Prix (also a Penske race) for those with general admission tickets.

The race also has attracted sponsors such as Starlink and Boeing, companies that typically aren’t active in motorsports but whose government business is precious. 

Penske Corporation only had 13 full-time staff come in from Detroit to do much of the pre-event work.

Monumental Sports — which owns the NBA Washington Wizards and the NHL Washington Capitals — handled the suite sales. Harbinger Events, another local company, is handling much of the interior fencing and logistics. 

The transit authority has been helping get the word out about the traffic disruptions as well as trying to get the word out for people coming to the track on the best way to get there and the entry points. 

"The INDYCAR Series, Penske Entertainment, they’re working on the event as a whole and making it pretty incredible for everybody that’s going to tune in and we’ll be a part of that," two-time series champion Josef Newgarden told me on Monday.

"I more so want to focus on what the track's going to be like and what do we need to be doing to win the race?"

The first thing he’ll have to do is manage the unique start.

Assuming Trump waves the green flag, he most likely can’t be in the flagstand. He would do it from the bulletproof-glass-encased suite in Turn 1. So drivers will take the green just after coming off a turn, which could be an adventure in and of itself. 

That probably isn't going to be the easiest way to start a race, but it's part of the challenge in putting on this spectacle.

As workers continued construction of that area, it was pretty easy to see that security measures were being put in place.

It is a lot for what will likely be a one-time effort. This was such a big lift, but Denker feels he could do it again.

"I could race this course again," Denker said. "Everybody’s been that cooperative. That’s not the issue. The issue is you only have one 250th anniversary."