Roger Penske stood on West Executive Avenue at the White House on July 13 and said something that would have sounded absurd coming from almost anyone else. He looked toward the National Mall, referenced the Indianapolis 500, and said what’s coming in August belongs right next to it.
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“We think about the Indy 500 as an iconic race, but this is going to move right up there next to it,” Roger Penske said, via Bob Pockrass. “But this is going to move right up there next to it, as far as we’re concerned, from the standpoint of the best in the world. Over 250,000 people signed up to come to this event.”
He was talking about the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C., an IndyCar race set to run through the National Mall on August 22-23. Admission is free, and demand was high enough that organizers had to run a lottery just to manage it, with more than 250,000 requests for the 100,000 spots available each day. On the same street where the announcement happened, IndyCar drivers Alex Palou, Felix Rosenqvist, and David Malukas had just run a live pit stop demonstration for the President.
That kind of turnaround from idea to reality took only a few months. Trump signed the executive order setting the race in motion on January 30, directing the White House’s America 250 task force to designate a route through the nation’s capital. The pitch behind it came from Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks and Penske, built around bringing IndyCar to the streets of Washington as part of the country’s 250th birthday.
What made the timeline move as fast as it did is where the story starts to explain itself better.
The Only Man Who Could Pull This Off: Roger Penske
This is not just a guy with good connections. Roger Penske owns the IndyCar Series. He owns Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In July 2025, Fox Sports bought a one-third stake in his IndyCar parent company. So when Shanks and Penske sat down with the White House to plan this, it was three entities with completely aligned interests in the same room.
The administration wanted a landmark 250th anniversary event. Penske wanted a blockbuster race. Fox wanted live prime-time content from the most recognizable address in the world. Done.
The relationship between Roger Penske and Trump goes back further than this race. Trump gave Penske the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019. After the race was announced, Penske wrote Trump a public letter thanking him for “returning investment to our great country.” These two were always going to find a project eventually.
The track is 1.7 miles of temporary circuit wrapped around the National Mall. Cars will hit 190 MPH on Pennsylvania Avenue and Independence Avenue, with the National Archives, National Gallery, and Smithsonian as the backdrop. Roger Penske’s team has built temporary street circuits in Detroit and St. Petersburg. They know how to do this without tearing up a city.
It has not been without pushback. Chuck Schumer criticized the event over federal advertising restrictions near the Capitol. Local planners raised legitimate questions about traffic and security in the middle of D.C. Trump used executive action to move past the resistance in Congress.
None of it made a dent. Nearly 300,000 people tried to get in for free. Penske closed his White House remarks with a personal request for the President, lead the field to green from inside the presidential motorcade.
“When you’re riding around in the beast,” Penske said, “Come to the green flag again.”
Organizers are expecting attendance in the range of a million spectators across the full event footprint once the two days are done, a scale that puts real weight behind Penske’s comparison to the Indy 500 rather than treating it as just a talking point. That’s what makes this event the largest free race in history.