I’m sitting high above Pennsylvania Avenue at Johns Hopkins, looking down on an IndyCar street course running through the heart of Washington, D.C., and I’m going to be honest: this absolutely rocks.
As a motorsports journalist, you get spoiled by cool race weekends. You see plenty of tracks, plenty of cars and plenty of big events.
But this is different.
IndyCar is racing around the National Mall, flying down Pennsylvania Avenue at incredible speeds with the Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol in the background. The 1.7-mile, seven-turn circuit is already producing some seriously fun racing, and the drivers clearly love the challenge.
And then there’s IROC.
Jeff Gordon. Kurt Busch. Bill Elliott. Rusty Wallace. Bobby Labonte. Helio Castroneves. Tony Kanaan. Dario Franchitti.
All of them climbing into authentic IROC Pontiac Firebirds and actually racing each other on this crazy street circuit.
That is the kind of thing you don’t get to see every day.
From up here, you can see the entire thing unfold. You hear the cars before you see them, watch them disappear down Pennsylvania Avenue and then come screaming back toward the next corner.
It feels surreal.