As Bud Denker dreamed last summer of holding an IndyCar race in downtown Washington, DC, he walked the city’s streets in the stifling heat and tried to design the course in his mind. Denker, the president of Penske Corp., a transportation company that also owns motorsports teams, had put on IndyCar races in other cities. But the nation’s capital presented a unique challenge.
The idea was laughable at first – an offhand suggestion made over a work dinner for how to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. Still, Denker was intrigued and traveled to DC in secret, not even telling his boss, Roger Penske.
The track Denker initially designed wrapped around the city’s iconic sites, including the US Capitol and the Washington Monument. But it wasn’t just the course that Denker had to consider – it was everything else that comes with putting on a race of that scale.
“The hardest problem in designing an urban race is, where do you put a pit lane?” Denker told CNN, referring to the roughly quarter-mile long strip with team garages where racecars pull over for quick repairs and to refuel. “And where do you put my 100 trucks that have to come to support the race?” Denker added.
Denker thought he had the perfect spot beside the US Capitol, a large space with wide streets winding around historic sites. He liked that part of the track would be uphill, an added challenge for the drivers.
