RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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An interest in the thrills of car racing is not what drove me to spend my Sunday afternoon at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, the latest of the spectacles that Donald Trump has presided over during the United States’ big birthday celebrations all summer. I was there yesterday because I was worried about art. The event involved 25 cars zipping around a number of D.C.’s museums and historic buildings at worryingly high speeds— 147 times . Preservationists and conservators had raised concerns ahead of the contest, leading me to imagine creaking sculptures and rattling ceramics, all because the president wanted a race around the National Mall. Seeing the National Gallery of Art’s huge black Alexander Calder sculpture outside, surrounded by wood boards as if the poor thing were hunkering down for war, didn’t help.
But it turns out that playing art patrol is rather difficult at an IndyCar race, especially when you find yourself crammed into a sweaty crowd as blurs of color whiz by. This proximity to the action means you are a participant in a much more visceral way than at many other sporting events: You can feel the vibrations in your toes. Somewhere among the vroom s, I realized that this was not like the other Freedom 250 productions I had attended, like the Great American State Fair with its drab triumphal arch and the Freedom Trucks with their selective history. Instead, in some moments, the Grand Prix was … fun?
The good vibes began when I spotted the driver Sting Ray Robb’s maintenance truck, decorated with the ridiculously wholesome image of seven puppies climbing on his race car. He immediately gained a fan in me, though he crashed early on. The course, with its many bumps, was tricky for drivers, and just more than half of them even finished. Kyle Kirkwood, another American, won.
Many might be tempted to slot the IndyCar race next to other Trumpian events that have disrupted life in the nation’s capital. More than that, the race could easily serve as another example of how little an administration that has pressured museums and diluted historic-preservation laws cares for the nation’s cultural heritage. These interpretations aren’t overblown.
Earlier this year, the Grand Prix unveiled (and later walked back) a disturbing T-shirt that featured a white-clad figure and read: One Nation One Race . In and around the city yesterday, the traffic was a pain for locals, the nearest airport had to stop flights for three hours, and the noise—including multiple deafening flyovers—was nothing short of a public nuisance. For those without tickets, access to the Mall was closed off. Madhan Subramanian, who lives by the course, told me he was “just a little annoyed by everything.” He thought it was a cool event, but “it was harder to get groceries and just do our normal thing.”
The worries about vibrations and damage to artifacts were legitimate, too. In the middle of the race, I put my hand on the boarded-up geometric I. M. Pei skylights outside the National Gallery and found them shaking like a cellphone on vibrate. (Not great!) A man yelled to me over the thunderous cars, “Are we okay?” I replied, in earnest, “I’m not sure.” (So far, there have been no reports of damaged art.)
Reckless is one word for what unfolded in the capital yesterday. But one person’s reckless is another’s exciting . And the Freedom 250 Grand Prix certainly had oomph to it. Trump did a lap of the track at the beginning of the race to the sound of mixed cheers and boos, and although I noticed Trump gear— Trump 2028 hats, for example—for sale outside the race perimeter, inside many fans had opted for checkers and race jerseys.
In other words, this didn’t feel like another Freedom 250 event that was more about Trump than about America. Race-car driving occupies its own indomitable universe of fandom, kitsch, design, and hype. Ultimately, a race is a race, and many in the crowd appeared to be there simply for the sport.
Keith Cole, a former amateur racer and F1 fan, was among them. A car race in downtown Washington seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so he came to D.C. with a friend despite some low-grade partisan energy they didn’t care for. “We don’t see a lot of people like us here,” Cole, who is Black, told me, noting some MAGA-hat sightings, too. “I understand how they want to use it to politicize it, but this is sports. You gotta, kind of, take it out of it.”
Most of the time, the National Mall is a reflective space flanked by quiet, regal buildings that command a certain respect. Yesterday, though, America’s “front yard” felt more like a backyard. IndyCar fans played cornhole and giant Connect Four on the grass, which was dotted with lemonade stands and picnic tables. In one moment, I was surrounded by beer-drinking racing fanatics; in the next, I was engulfed in the smell of gasoline and the sound of revving engines; minutes later, after a short stroll, I was standing in the National Gallery in front of a Georgia O’Keeffe.
Inside one of the galleries, I found Carol Madden—a native of Indianapolis, IndyCar’s namesake and the site of its premier event, the 500—seeking a break from the heat near some Renaissance-era earthenware. “The Indy 500 is Christmas for my family. We don’t come home for Christmas and Easter—we all come home for the race,” she told me. This was her 55th race, which she attended with her whole family, she said, getting teary-eyed.
Nearby, Diana Vinson, as much a race-car fan as a museum lover, was immersed in a photograph on the wall. She didn’t see her appreciation for the two things as entirely separate. Both art and racing are all about precision; they’re about tiny decisions—in brushstrokes or tire pressure—that add up. “You have to understand your mediums,” she told me.
The museum was making the most of any connection it could find with the event, which forced it to partially close for the race; the portion of it that remained open was accessible only to IndyCar ticket holders. (The...
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