Auto racing has been a part of American culture as long as I can remember, but I never recall racing having been a part of the White House before. At least not until this summer, when on July 13, an event that was billed as a “Grand Prix Showcase” played out on the narrow strip of pavement between the West Wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.Reigning IndyCar champion Alex Palou, 2026 Indianapolis 500 winner Felix Rosenqvist, and David Malukas stood alongside Roger Penske, the team owner and businessman who bought IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway outright in 2020; Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy; Penske Corporation President Bud Denker; Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks; and General Motors President Mark Reuss. Malukas performed a burnout on the White House grounds after a Team Penske crew ran a pit stop drill in front of the assembled dignitaries, and Palou presented the president with a personalized racing helmet before getting a private walk-through of the Oval Office, an experience he later described as feeling like a scene out of a movie.President Donald Trump, for his part, used the occasion to settle a debate that had been simmering in sports media for months, declaring that professional race car drivers are, in fact, athletes — a rebuttal to sports commentators such as ESPN‘s Stephen A. Smith, who had argued earlier this year that steering a car doesn’t count as athleticism, prompting pushback from NASCAR legends Jeff Gordon and Kyle Larson. (For my money, driving a car does not make one an athlete, but driving a high-performance race car at 200 mph while staying on the track and somehow not spinning off course? To do that, one absolutely needs to be one of the best athletes in the world. Just ask Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Rafael Nadal, and the other all-time great athletes who have recently gotten into motorsports whether they think auto racers are athletes.)