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O\u2019Ward was getting in the cowboy spirit ahead of Friday\u2019s running. Photo: Kevin Dejewski<\/p>\nIndyCar is in the middle of a busy race weekend on a brand new street course in Arlington, Texas, and the drivers are already singing its praises.<\/p>\n
The event, which has backing from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and is taking place on the stadium\u2019s property, has been assembled with such care and precision that it is already being pegged as one of the series\u2019 marquee events.<\/p>\n
Pato O\u2019Ward considers this his new home race, since a potential event in Mexico City did not materialize, and feels this is one of the best facilities around.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everybody involved in this Arlington GP has done a phenomenal job with track layout and how everything looks,\u201d said O\u2019Ward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe paddock suites, pit lane, everything looks as it should. I can share the feeling of being impressed with everyone in the paddock.<\/p>\n
\u201cKudos to Jerry Jones, Roger Penske, the Texas Rangers, they all really went above and beyond to make sure this place looks as it should.\u201d<\/p>\n
No growing pains<\/p>\n
Promoters of temporary street courses, as opposed to permanent race facilities, have a tough task in order to create a quality race track from the ground up for each race weekend.<\/p>\n
The task is even tougher for brand new events because there are many different considerations to keep in mind when planning the build.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Ward was getting in the cowboy spirit ahead of Friday\u2019s running. Photo: Kevin Dejewski<\/p>\n
Early assessments indicate that this particular track in Arlington has been built remarkably well, with even the veteran Scott Dixon remarking that this could be the new benchmark going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think how they\u2019re done this and what IndyCar does at street racing and how they\u2019ve activated here is epic,\u201d said Dixon. \u201cI\u2019m always excited to be in Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is the new standard. This is what IndyCar need to stick to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle Kirkwood largely echoed his thoughts, and also praised the ability of organizers to quickly address small changes that were needed.<\/p>\n
The fifth year driver mentioned the few problem areas that drivers identified, such as the placement of the curbs at Turn 10, but confirmed that they have all been taken care of before cars even took to the track.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks beautiful,\u201d said Kirkwood. \u201cI think this is one of the best track builds I\u2019ve ever seen for IndyCar.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what IndyCar racing should look like. The hospitality, the hype around this place, where we\u2019re at, the build looks beautiful, the branding on all the walls looks perfect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s what a marquee event should look like for us in IndyCar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IndyCar is in the middle of a busy race weekend on a brand new street course in Arlington,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,80189,78846,1160,80190,80191],"class_list":["post-203302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-arlingtongp","tag-dixon","tag-indycar","tag-kirkwood","tag-oward"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}