I am an auto racing fan. I had a dear friend whose wife worked for the F1 powerhouse Williams. I’ve been to ARCA and Indycar races. We used to be season ticket holders for the NASCAR races in Richmond and Martinsville, and I’ve been to NASCAR races at Bristol and Daytona, including the Daytona 500. I’ve even gone to watch drifting competitions at the racetrack down the road. I just like cars as examples of form and function. And I think it is beyond stupid for the Indy car series to be racing a street course in DC this weekend.
If you’re not an auto racing fan or someone in the DC area you might not even know this is going on. So here are the details. As part of its ongoing effort to ruin the nations 250th birthday LINK, the Trump-backed America 250 group got Indycar to run a street race course in DC. Like everything else that Trump touches, it’s quickly gone to shit.
Race prep has required extensive road closures in downtown DC where the course is being set up. This has created incredible gridlock on top of what is already awful traffic. And I don’t mean the regular closures for big events. See, because the streets for the course have to be reinforced and repaved to support these cars racing at 200 MPH, the closures began in July and the streets won’t completely reopen until September. All air traffic in and out of National Airport will be shut down during the race. And surface traffic is awful:
Just how slow was Wednesday afternoon traffic?
This reporter walked along 14th Street from Constitution Avenue to Independence Avenue — a distance of a third of a mile — faster than cars were able to make the same trip.
A Metrobus took about seven minutes to travel just one block, from Constitution Avenue to Madison Drive near the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The bus sat through four cycles of red lights before making it through the intersection.
WTOP talked with drivers caught in the backup, including Nancy Marlow, of Virginia, whose trip was taking more than three times longer than usual.
“This is worse than cherry blossom,” Marlow said. “I’ve been out here over an hour. This time of year, it normally takes me 20 minutes.”
I lived in the city for 20 years, and “worse than cherry blossom” season is a strong statement.
Trump made the race happen by executive order (it wasn’t part of the original plan for the 2026 Indycar series) and so he will wave the green flag after taking a parade lap. Because of this, the race won’t actually start at the traditional start/finish line so who knows what kind of a mess that might create.
And apart from the damage it will inevitably do to the ostensibly fortified streets, there is a serious concern that the cars thundering past the Smithsonian museums will do harm to the art inside:
Along the route, they will zoom past cultural institutions including the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives Building and the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space and Hirshhorn Museums.
And that has raised questions about the safety of the art and artifacts inside. Namely: Could they be damaged by vibrations from the cars whizzing by?
The National Gallery of Art, whose sculpture garden is along the course, has boarded up some of its outdoor works.
Spokesperson Chris Abanavas told NPR over email that it “conducted an extensive vibration study and based on the results we have implemented a set of measures to ensure the safety of our staff, visitors, collection, and facilities during the race.”
Neither the National Archives and Records Administration nor the Smithsonian Institution answered NPR’s questions about preparations or concerns. Race organizers — the White House and IndyCar, which is owned by Penske Entertainment Corp. — say they are taking proper precautions and don’t anticipate any damage.
“The White House and Penske have followed all appropriate protocols and been in close coordination with all relevant agencies to ensure this is also the safest and most secure race for all visitors to enjoy,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told NPR over email.
Well, what else would they say?
IndyCar officials point to the success of other races in sensitive areas, like one in Detroit’s historic Belle Isle Park, and another that goes directly past the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla. Beth Bell, chief marketing officer of The Dalí Museum, told NPR that the museum — which was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane — has “remained safe and secure throughout the event’s history.”
“With this excellent track record and the thorough preparation we have done for this event, working closely with all the appropriate local and federal agencies, we do not anticipate any impact on the structures surrounding the circuit as a result of the race,” IndyCar spokesperson Alex Damron told NPR in a statement.
That’s nice, but that is meaningless since the museums on the Mall aren’t built to withstand hurricanes, and this is isn’t a matter of wind, but vibrations instead.
But critics say the National Mall is different: Speed limits are generally around 25 mph. A race like this has never been held there before (other than centuries-old horse races, a favorite presidential pastime in the country’s early days). And organizers had less than a year to plan the event.
“For several hours of racing cars, we might be risking … the access to these extraordinary works for future generations,” art historian Mary Okin told NPR.
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Okin is concerned that buildings and artifacts could be damaged by vibrations associated with course construction and the race itself, plus worst-case scenarios like fires and flying debris, as she wrote in a late-July letter to the National Park Service (which issued permits for the event).
More broadly, Okin says that the planning and permitting process did not adequately explore that question or prepare for those possibilities.
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Neither the White House, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Transportation, nor the National Park Service answered NPR’s questions about safety and process concerns.
Well of course they didn’t. These are the same people who couldn’t even manage to build a stage properly:
Good luck to everyone in DC this weekend.
I’ll leave you with this:
