IndyCar removed an official Freedom 250 Grand Prix t-shirt from its online store just a few hours after releasing it due to immediate backlash.
The shirt featured President Abraham Lincoln sitting in the Lincoln Memorial, wearing a racing helmet. The words “One Nation” and “One Race” are written above and below the image, respectively.
The t-shirt shirt was met with swift criticism from those who found it both offensive as well as inflammatory.
“IndyCar selling a ‘One Nation, One Race’ t-shirt for the Freedom 250 is incredibly insensitive and inflammatory. This is something that should never have been approved,” Ryan Erik King, a writer at automotive website Jalopnik, wrote on X.
When asked to comment on the t-shirt by The Athletic, IndyCar said in a statement: “A shirt was removed from IndyCar’s online store following feedback from customers. We understand that some individuals found its phrasing concerning and therefore have remedied the situation.”
Part of remedying “the situation,” according to IndyCar, was that they removed the t-shirt from their online store mere hours after they released it on Wednesday.
What is the IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix?
The IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix will take place on Aug. 21-23. It will be the first-ever auto race held on the National Mall and the streets of Washington, D.C.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing “the Department of the Interior and the Department of Transportation to designate a suitable race route that showcases the majesty of Washington, D.C., and its iconic national monuments.”
The street circuit will feature seven corners across a 1.7-mile layout. It will include racing on 9th Street, past the National Archives and the National Gallery of Art on 7th Street, and onto Independence Avenue, past the Hirshhorn Museum and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It will then head onto 3rd Street to the start/finish line on a 0.4-mile straightaway down Pennsylvania Avenue.
“This circuit is unlike any other street race we’ve seen,” two-time IndyCar champion and back-to-back Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden said about the circuit. “You’ve got a high‑speed section down Pennsylvania Avenue that will reward commitment and precision, mixed with technical corners around 9th Street that will demand respect.”