IndyCar’s Java House Grand Prix of Arlington will take its inaugural green flag Sunday with an “unfair advantage” that is unmistakably the calling card of Roger S. Penske.
The term was coined by Mark Donohue, Team Penske’s original superstar driver and the man who delivered the first of the organization’s record 20 Indianapolis 500 victories to “The Captain” in May 1972.
The phrase encompasses Penske’s relentless pursuit of perfection, its starched, white-shirted professionalism, its attention to detail and an eye on engineering that liberally interprets and exploits any racing series rulebook.
That philosophy has governed Penske’s championship-winning NASCAR and IndyCar teams, as well as Penske Entertainment Corporation’s stewardship of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the NTT IndyCar Series since Jan. 5, 2020.
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“My father … he just turned 89 [on Feb. 20] and the guy is going as hard as he’s ever gone,” said Greg Penske, one of Roger’s four sons and vice chairman of Penske Entertainment. “It’s amazing. I’m very fortunate to still have a front-row seat being with him. And as he would say, ‘We’ve just got to keep executing every single day, right?’ Take care of your team.
“We like to say ‘it’s one guest at a time,’ and if they’re coming to a race like the Java House Grand Prix of Arlington, we’ve got to make sure we give these guests a great experience.”
The inaugural Arlington race weekend – the first of a multiyear contract with Indianapolis-based IndyCar – is projected to create a multimillion dollar revenue stream for the popular Arlington Entertainment District and throughout North Texas by capitalizing on the “unfair advantage” of its unique partnership among IndyCar, Fox Sports and the marketing clout of the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers via REV Entertainment.
Combo became a ‘no-brainer’
The first of three new street races on this season’s expanded, 18-race schedule, the race will be contested over 70 laps and 191.1 miles on a temporary 2.73-mile, 14-turn layout on the streets winding around AT&T Stadium, home to the Cowboys, and Globe Life Field, home to the Rangers.
The track
“We’ve got a brand here, and we’re in a market that’s one of the fastest-growing in the country,” said Greg Penske, who is credited with originally pitching the partnership to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his daughter Charlotte Jones, the team’s executive vice president and chief brand officer. “So we know we have to be here, no matter what.”
As a co-owner of the Cowboys, Charlotte Jones has managed business operations, marketing and stadium strategy for over 30 years. The notion of getting involved in big-time motor sports with the Penskes proved intriguing.
“Obviously, Roger was involved,” Jones said. “But it was really Greg who came down and talked to our family and said, ‘This is our vision and what we want to do.’
“We had always had an interest of getting involved [in motor sports] in some way … conversations on and off. None of it materialized until the Penskes came to us. I think it was a great convergence of like minds. Roger and Jerry have a tremendous amount of respect for each other, and Greg is very much in line with that.
“Those conversations were met with open ears. And the concept of partnering with REV and the Rangers and Globe Life Field – all of that was a no-brainer.”
Multiple factors behind TMS exit
So, why the need for a street race in Arlington around JerryWorld and the Rangers’ air-conditioned ballyard?
Recall that IndyCar exited Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth – and a Dallas-Fort Worth market ranked fifth nationally – on April 2, 2023, when IndyCar’s colorful and controversial relationship with TMS and its high-banked, 1 1/2-mile oval ended after Penske ace Josef Newgarden took the checkered flag for the PPG 375.
That was the first race of a new, three-year contract between IndyCar and Speedway Motorsports, parent company of TMS. But when the 2024 schedule was announced five months later, TMS had been dropped, the result of a conflict created by NASCAR’s move from its traditional November weekend to the spring. Thus ended a run of 36 open-wheel races that began under TMS president/general manager and promoter extraordinaire Eddie Gossage dating to the track’s initial season in 1997.
“Obviously, when we first started racing there [under the lights in June 1997] the racing was kind of – electric – right?” IndyCar President Doug Boles said. “It was also pack racing, which proved to be a pretty dangerous prospect. So IndyCar tried to figure out how to have great racing but not that 220 mph pack racing. Then it got to a point where it did become single-file. The PJ1 [traction compound] that NASCAR put down made the second groove harder to run in … a whole bunch of things made it difficult.
“And I do think there was probably less promotion in and around the IndyCar event, which hurt as well. The grandstands, as large as they were and not being able to sell those grandstands out, made the crowd look a lot smaller than maybe it actually was. A lot of things factored into it and required us to move on. I don’t think that means we won’t ever go back, it just has to be the right opportunity.”
Boles noted he was speaking from his experiences on the team side of the sport.
“I was one of the co-owners of Panther Racing, and I think we won at TMS like five times,” Boles said. “And outside of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway probably was my favorite racetrack. I had a great relationship with Eddie Gossage. Eddie was such a great advocate for IndyCar, and it’s just unfortunate to have lost him.”
Gossage retired on June 13, 2021. He lost a battle with cancer on May 16, 2024.
“Getting back into that market for us is very important,” Boles said. “I mean the Dallas-Fort Worth market is massive and the history of Fort Worth and [three-time Indy 500 champion] Johnny Rutherford and IndyCar racing is also important. And as we start thinking about our schedule, we want to have races that are also events. Oftentimes in order to do that it means taking the racing to the people.
“For us, we’re looking for unique locations that are event-worthy, and when you can partner with somebody like the Cowboys and the Rangers it makes it even more compelling from a business and promotional standpoint. You get the promotional muscle of the NTT IndyCar Series with the massive promotional muscle, especially in Texas, of the Cowboys and the Rangers. It’s a unique experiment for us and one we think is going to prove to be really successful.”
Taking it to the streets
Confirmed during a media event on Oct. 8, 2024, in the Arlington Entertainment District, the race has been ballyhooed as a marquee happening – one likely to quickly rival established events in St. Petersburg, Fla., downtown Detroit and the series’ crown jewel street race in Long Beach, Calif.
The task of creating Arlington’s racetrack was orchestrated by New Zealander Tony Cotman.
“The goal was to provide a track that was really quick and flowing, and I hope we achieved that,” said Cotman, whose NZR Consulting specializes in delivering the series’ temporary street circuits. “I hope it’s a challenge.”
In addition to the Arlington track, Cotman also is designing the 2.19-mile, 12-turn circuit in Markham, Ontario, which will replace the series’ long-standing layout in Toronto this summer.
He was involved in designing the 1.7-mile, nine-turn Detroit circuit running through the heart of downtown and created the 2.17-mile, 11-turn layout that hosted the Music City Grand Prix in Nashville beginning in 2021 that currently resides in motor sports limbo.
Cotman’s trademark is implementing modern, high-safety and sometimes dramatic elements like double-sided pit lanes – a feature of the Arlington track – to test the skill set of IndyCar’s star drivers.
“There’s some fast corners, some slow corners … a little bit of everything,” Cotman said. “The goal behind this is to provide different types of corners, different speeds, different shapes … just to try and spice the racing up.”
Economic engine
Boles said the projected economic impact created by an estimated three-day attendance of between 75,000 and 80,000 fans rivals that of the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
“St. Pete says their economic impact for the 2023 event was $61 million – $31 million of which is direct spending, how many times a dollar gets spent in a market – and overall $61 million.”
As of March 6, fans from 46 states and 11 countries had purchased tickets.
Bill Miller, president of the Grand Prix of Arlington and a veteran Penske executive, said an economic impact study will be conducted at the conclusion of the Arlington weekend.
“Historically, events of our nature, we’ve had a range of between $50 million and $100 million relative to other events on the circuit – whether it’s the Chevy Detroit Grand Prix or the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach,” Miller said. “It’s definitely a significant economic impact to the area. And certainly as you build up this first year you have a lot of infrastructure improvement and doing business with companies here in Texas that will contribute to the economy.”
In what rates as another unique partnership, Fox Corp. – parent company of Fox Sports – purchased a one-third interest in Penske Entertainment, inclusive of IndyCar and the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 31, 2025. The announcement included a multiyear extension of IndyCar’s media rights with Fox Sports, which is currently in its second season.
“This [race] is going to be a two-hour commercial [live on Fox Sports] really highlighting the Arlington Entertainment District and all of North Texas,” Miller said.
“Hopefully, millions of people will be watching on Fox,” said Sean Decker, president of REV Entertainment. “We’re ready to party come rain or shine. We like to joke that we want to throw a party and an event may break out.
“REV Entertainment and the Rangers, we’re not strangers to different events out of the stick-and-ball realm. There’s no question there will be world-class racing, but we also want to make sure that with the concerts and all the ancillary things we’re doing we’re attracting a large audience whether the racing is new to them or the components around the event are new to them.”
Decker recalled the buzz surrounding Games 1 and 2 of the 2023 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Rangers. The teams split those two games at Globe Life Field, with the Rangers winning the next three in Phoenix to clinch the franchise’s first world championship.
The economic impact of those two World Series games in Arlington?
“The short answer is … I don’t know,” Decker said. “The longer answer is that our hotels were full, our restaurants were full, the energy in the district was tremendous. And from our side, the goal with what’s coming from the race weekend is just that.”
John Sturbin is Fort Worth-based freelancer and staff writer at Raceday San Antonio (racedaySA.com). He can be contacted at jsturbin@hotmail.com.
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