671 - Freedom 250 Grand Prix
Today I went to the Freedom 250 Grand Prix race in DC.
And I’m going to start by saying that if you came to this post hoping I’d chop up some politics, you’ve been sorely mistaken.
They built a race track right in the middle of Washington DC. On Sunday, August 23rd, 2026 Formula 1 cars were going to be ripping downtown past world-famous monuments at 180+ miles per hour. You can bet your ass I was gonna be there if I got the chance, politics aside.
It all started because my co-worker at the camera shop mentioned he knew someone that had an extra ticket. Which was wild because the tickets were free, and sold out within minutes of release to the general public.
It was my lucky day. All I had to do was meet this random dude at 8AM so he could scan me into the event. And this random dude said things like “You won’t be able to miss me- look for the tall, dark, and handsome guy wearing a cowboy hat.”
At least it was going to be good company. And the man was a photographer- which meant we’d be on the same page when it came to location scouting.
Our ticket class was Stripes (with the other being Stars…), which meant that we were allowed pretty much anywhere on the interior of the track. There were several viewing platforms set up, and the moment the gates opened, ticket holders rushed to reserve their seats, which were first come, first serve.
My plan was the opposite. I wasn’t there early to get a good seat that I’d camp at from the next five hours until the race started. My plan was to scope out every possible angle of the track to determine the best possible spot for photography.
Which surprised me when my tall, dark, and handsome friend had the latter philosophy. Get there early, and hold down a rare, but elevated spot, until the race starts.
We decided to go our separate ways. I wasn’t about to sit in the blazing hot sun for 5 hours for one good angle.
What if that angle didn’t even turn out to be good? Then I’d be sun burnt and have no idea what else I was missing.
So I scouted. I walked the entire perimeter of the track, and determined a few positions that seemed solid. But in reality, I had no idea the scope of the crowd that was going to trickle in over the next couple hours.
The event started with a warm-up lap around 9AM. I used the fifteen minutes of track time to practice my pan tracking, which was my goal for this shoot:
I didn’t want any “real” photos. I wanted all motion blurred madness, to capture the energy of the place.
And honestly, I was happy with these two shots right out of the gate. Both were taken around 1/15th - 1/25th of a second at f/16+, and I burst-mode tracked the car around a turn and a straight-away.
I will say it took me about 500 shots to get those two shots, though. It wasn’t an easy feat.
Then the warm-up ended. Now there was actually nothing to do for the next four hours. It was scorching hot out, I couldn’t leave the ticket zone, and the race didn’t start until one. They had fly-overs, police parades, and enough hot dogs to feed a nation, but none of that caught my attention. I wanted cars.
I just sat at a shady bench for those 240 minutes, alternating my gaze between the National Gallery of Art’s fountain and the people that make up Trump’s America. It was two sides of a different coin.
And then finally, the moment arrived. Race time.
The first cars hit the gate, and whipped by in their turbo V6, 1000+HP engines, manufacturing a sound I couldn’t even begin to describe. It felt like some type of dystopian race movie, the way sound echoed off the city buildings. It was ridiculously fun.
The only problem was that during my four hour meditation outside the art museum, the crowd had increased by about 500%.
All the little spots that I’d “scoped out” for the race were now swarming with people who wanted nothing more than to be closer to the track than me.
It was time to be brutal. There’s certain points in your life where you have to be selfish or nothing is going to get done. This was one of those times.
I’ll leave out the details, but know I went to war and back for these shots in that crowd:
Overall, some solid images. I especially enjoyed the abstract nature of the pan, which resembled the absolute chaos unfolding around me. The heat, the engines, the crowd, the scope of the event…
All pure insanity. Never to happen again.
