President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump showed up to launch the first major motor race ever held around the National Mall, and the left's loudest critic could only complain about the price of gas.
Kyle Kirkwood led 128 of 147 laps and pulled away to a dominant 3.09-second victory in the inaugural IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix on Sunday, August 23, driving his No. 27 Sam's Club Andretti Global Honda through a 1.7-mile, seven-turn street circuit that wound past the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. Trump waved the green flag to start the race after taking a lap in his armored limousine, known as "the Beast," with the First Lady at his side. More than 215,000 people turned out across two days of racing, AP News reported, with nearly $969,000 in merchandise sold on Saturday alone.
The event marked the third major race Trump has attended since returning to office, following the Daytona 500 and the Coke 600. He established the Freedom 250 weekend as part of the yearlong celebration of America's 250th birthday, a celebration that, for one Sunday afternoon, traded marble monuments for screaming engines and the smell of burnt rubber.
In an interview with Fox reporter Jamie Little at the race, Trump credited motorsports titan Roger Penske with the vision behind the event, and himself with the execution. OutKick's Zach Dean reported Trump's account of how the race came together:
"Roger said they've been trying to do it for 20 years. I think he told me they've been down 211 times. But when he came to see Trump, it got done in about 15 minutes."
Whether the 211-attempts figure is precise or presidential flair, the result was real enough: open-wheel cars at triple-digit speeds on a circuit that loops around the seat of American government. Race chair Bud Denker called the weekend exactly what it looked like.
"This was not a race. It was an event."
Discussions are already underway about continuing the Freedom 250 for five more years, according to AP. That kind of staying power would turn a one-off spectacle into a fixture on the national sports calendar, and a recurring reminder that the race exists because a president signed the order to make it happen.
Kirkwood, a Florida native who lives in Jupiter, was the second odds-on favorite entering the race. He made the oddsmakers look cautious. Leading 128 of the 147 laps, he built a gap that a late caution could not erase, finishing 3.0906 seconds ahead of Christian Lundgaard for his second IndyCar victory of the season. Just The News noted it was the first major motor race ever held around the National Mall.
Kirkwood did not hide what the moment meant to him. The New York Post reported his post-race reaction:
"You can't even put it into words. This is incredible. I'm almost in tears here. This is a big moment for us. Big moment for America here, the 250."
He expanded on the win's significance in a separate interview:
"This likely is the most satisfying win that I've had, just the magnitude of it... having this race here in D.C., being the Freedom 250, as an American, it might top the first win for me."
After the race, Kirkwood posed with a bald eagle, a detail that would sound invented if it weren't documented on camera. The race itself was the second-longest street course event in IndyCar history at 250 miles, a grueling test on a circuit that offered zero margin for error between concrete barriers and national landmarks.
Not everyone celebrated. Sen. Adam Schiff took to X to frame the entire event as a taxpayer-funded vanity project. His post read:
"While you struggle with the cost of gas, Trump offers you the spectacle of an IndyCar race hoping you will not notice. More taxpayer money spent on his self-aggrandizing distractions. And you get higher taxes and higher costs."
Schiff offered no figures to support his claim of taxpayer expense, and no cost breakdown appeared in any available reporting. What did appear was a crowd of more than 215,000 over two days and nearly a million dollars in merchandise revenue on Saturday alone, numbers that suggest plenty of Americans were happy to notice. The event generated the kind of commercial activity and national attention that most cities spend years trying to attract.
Schiff's complaint also carried a familiar contradiction. Progressives routinely champion public spending on cultural events, urban festivals, and stadium subsidies when those projects align with their preferred constituencies. A patriotic motorsports event celebrating the nation's founding, attended by a Republican president, apparently does not qualify.
The Freedom 250 was not the only race on Sunday. At New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, Ryan Blaney drove his No. 12 Menards/Dutch Boy Ford to victory in the NASCAR Cup Series Dollar Tree 301.
Bubba Wallace finished second, a result that all but locked him into the NASCAR playoffs, but he was not in a celebratory mood. A brake lockup in the final laps cost him a shot at the win. Wallace radioed his team after the checkered flag with a blunt assessment:
"That lockup killed it. That's the worst f, king car I've ever driven."
A runner-up finish that secures a playoff berth is a good day by any standard, even if it did not feel like one in the moment. The NASCAR playoff picture heading into Daytona week remained tight, with several drivers jockeying for the final spots.
Carson Hocevar, already locked into the playoffs, gave a thumbs-up to start the New Hampshire race despite rain, then promptly spun out under caution on the wet track. Joey Logano offered the kind of commentary only a fellow competitor would deliver: "Look at this guy, look at this idiot."
The Freedom 250 did something rare in modern American public life: it brought a massive, enthusiastic crowd to the nation's capital for an event that was unambiguously patriotic, commercially successful, and built around competition rather than grievance. The circuit ran past buildings that represent the country's founding ideals. The winner called it a dream come true. The president started the race. And hundreds of thousands of people showed up to watch.
Meanwhile, in a separate corner of the racing world, an ARCA Series altercation captured on video produced its own memorable exchange between unidentified individuals, a pair of bleeped-out expletives that summed up the raw, unfiltered emotion motorsports can produce. The details of the incident remained unclear, but the language was unmistakable.
The left spent Sunday complaining that a popular, well-attended celebration of America's birthday was somehow a distraction. More than 215,000 Americans disagreed, with their feet, their wallets, and their cheers.
