The streets of Washington, DC, will give way to the roar of open-wheel auto racing this weekend as the Freedom 250 Grand Prix zooms around the National Mall.
The event will be the first-ever NTT INDYCAR SERIES race on the National Mall and was established via an executive order from President Donald Trump to commemorate the country's 250th anniversary.
The event will include practice and qualifying on Aug. 22 and the race beginning at 1:10 p.m. on Aug. 23. The race will be broadcast live on FOX.
The cars participating in the race will be IndyCar race cars, which are unique lightweight, open-wheel, single-seater race cars that are specifically engineered for North American motorsports competitions, the most famous being the Indianapolis 500.
Where will the 2026 Freedom 250 Grand Prix race take place in Washington, DC?
The
race will consist of 147 laps around a course at the east end of the National Mall. A single lap of the course is 1.7 miles, and 147 laps equals 250 miles.
The start and finish line of the course is directly west of the U.S. Capitol Building, and the seven-turn lap takes drivers past the National Archives, the Washington Monument, the National Gallery of Art and these three Smithsonian museums:
- The National Museum of Natural History
- The National Air & Space Museum
- The National Museum of the American Indian
Visitor access to these museums will still be available, but the entry process will be modified, as visitors will need to go through an additional security check at the event entrance on Aug. 21. On Aug. 22 and 23, visitors will need an event ticket to access those museums.
A pit lane area of the track will run adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue between turns 1 and 2.
The race comes on the heels of another high-profile sporting event established by an executive order from Trump. On June 14, the UFC Freedom 250 mixed martial arts event took place on the South Lawn of the White House.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Map shows the Washington, DC, grand prix route at the National Mall
