{"id":206387,"date":"2026-03-16T03:50:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/206387\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T03:50:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:50:23","slug":"grand-prix-of-arlington-deserves-its-rave-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/206387\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Prix of Arlington deserves its rave reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

ARLINGTON \u2014 The first open-wheel street race in North Texas in more than four decades went off like gangbusters Sunday, with the inaugural Java House Grand Prix of Arlington<\/a> drawing rave reviews all around. Good thing, too. It\u2019s taken 42 years for open-wheel racing to get over the last time it was here, when chunks of track came up in the 100-degree heat at Fair Park and a driver fainted while trying to push his car to the finish.<\/p>\n

The moral of 1984\u2019s F1 Dallas Grand Prix<\/a>: Never schedule anything outside around here in July.<\/p>\n

Of course, every season presents its challenges. Officials had to bump up the start of Sunday\u2019s NTT IndyCar race an hour to avoid expected 40-mph gusts later in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

Hard enough to pilot these road rockets without a gust catching a wing and landing you on the other side of the interstate.<\/p>\n

Sports Roundup<\/p>\n

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No question about it, this wasn\u2019t your usual sports experience out at JerryWorld and the Globe, and not exactly a Friday night on Central Expressway, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an incredible event,\u201d said Kyle Kirkwood, the winner.<\/a> \u201cThis event was done right. The track was built properly with the fencing, the walls, the branding. It looked clean.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked exactly how a premier motor sports race should look like at a street course, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"IndyCar<\/p>\n

Better, if you ask the runner-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy expectations were already high,\u201d Alex Palou said, \u201cbut this has exceeded them by 10 times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is by far the best street race that I\u2019ve been part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may or may not be surprised by who got the credit. The race was billed as a collaborative effort with Penske Entertainment, the Cowboys and REV Entertainment, the Rangers\u2019 official events partner. But, other than Pudge Rodriguez, who teamed up with DeMarcus Ware as an official co-starter<\/a>, it was decidedly a Jerry Jones<\/a> production, if not infomercial.<\/p>\n

The 83-year-old billionaire and his Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders seemed to be everywhere Sunday. There he was rubbing elbows with Roger Penske.<\/a> Or yukking it up on the Fox set.<\/p>\n

Or dancing on top of JerryWorld.<\/p>\n

His cartoon image, anyway.<\/p>\n

A natural born promoter, Jerry saw the potential when Greg Penske, Roger\u2019s son, approached him after the demise of the IndyCar series at Texas Motor Speedway three years ago.<\/a> Penske figured a circuit around JerryWorld and the Globe might attract fans who aren\u2019t inclined to drive out to TMS.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

They were also hoping for a younger demographic charmed by the buzz of street racing over ovals. Last year, Penske said, they doubled the size of their 18-to-34 market. A cursory look over the packed grandstands Sunday \u2013 officials expected a crowd of 80,000 \u2013 indicated they got what they marketed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re not changing,\u201d Penske said, \u201cyou\u2019re not winning and you\u2019re not trying hard enough. At the end of the day, I think the team we\u2019ve got at IndyCar, the team with the Cowboys and team with the Rangers, we feel that we\u2019ve got a great partnership starting out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, time and ticket sales will tell. The fact that the agreement is being called a \u201cthree- to five-year\u201d deal tells you something. If it comes back next year \u2013 and there\u2019s no reason to think otherwise at this point \u2013 that\u2019ll beat the Dallas Grand Prix\u2019s open-wheel run.<\/p>\n

The first mistake back in \u201884 was trading the chance of rain in spring for the heat of mid-summer. Officials even moved up the start of the Dallas race three hours, to no avail. Temperatures in the cockpits reportedly hit 140 degrees, transforming sleek miracles of automotive technology into 180-mph crock pots.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the conditions back then provided for one of racing\u2019s iconic moments: Nigel Mansell, his gearbox on the fritz, getting out to push his car on the final lap. He made it about 50 meters before going down like Alec Guinness at the end of The Bridge on the River Kwai.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so angry,\u201d Mansell said later. \u201cI just kept pushing. Then the lights went out, and I woke up in the hospital, on a drip in a bed packed with ice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardly the image F1 was trying to sell at the time, and that was that. Dallas and Addison hosted a few Trans Am races over the next decade or so, but no more open-wheel. Until Sunday.<\/p>\n

The sport is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. An Oscar nomination for F1 with a star turn from Brad Pitt certainly helps. IndyCar may not be as glamorous as F1, but a rising tide apparently floats all open-wheel cars as well as boats.<\/p>\n

Bill Miller, president of the Grand Prix of Arlington, hopes the race will become a \u201csignature event\u201d on the calendar and a template for what street circuits might become.<\/p>\n

How big can this one be going forward? Maybe second on the IndyCar calendar only to you-know-what.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great event, by any stretch, let alone for a first-year event,\u201d said Dan Towers, CEO of TWG Motorsports, Sunday\u2019s winner. \u201cSo thank you to Jerry Jones and the team that put this together. I think everybody knows they do it right.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need big events like this event here in Arlington, Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The partnership with the Cowboys drives much of the optimism. Say what you will about Jerry, he knows how to put on a show.<\/p>\n

Going in, he told Penske that if he was to be associated with open-wheel\u2019s return, it had to be \u201cextremely high quality\u201d for everyone from drivers to fans. Penske delivered.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is beyond anything I ever expected,\u201d Jerry said.<\/p>\n

From a personal view, there\u2019s something about the concrete barriers of a makeshift street circuit that remind me of four brothers swapping paint in the hallway trying to be first to the bathroom. The 190 top-end speeds on the backstretch are also believed to be a Randol Mill Road record.<\/p>\n

Also interesting to see Felix Rosenqvist of Sweden racing a car in Texas A&M livery. Seems like Texas ought to respond in kind next year.<\/p>\n

Or at least UT-Arlington.<\/p>\n

Besides the fact that no one got hurt or ended up in ice, the whole thing was over in a little less than two hours, which fits the 18-to-34 attention span, all right.<\/p>\n

A win all the way around, if you ask me, even if weather once again played a factor. If it\u2019s not broiling heat forcing officials to move up the start time, it\u2019s gale-force winds doing the same. Always something around here. Like the deep freeze in 2011 that settled in during the area\u2019s one-and-only Super Bowl. Might be why JerryWorld hasn\u2019t hosted one since. Unless it\u2019s because of the owner, a force of nature, too, come to think of it. He outdid himself this weekend. Now if we could just get him to take up racing full-time.<\/p>\n

Race day in North Texas: See photos from Kyle Kirkwood’s victory in the inaugural Java House Grand Prix of Arlington<\/p>\n

\"RaceView Gallery<\/p>\n

For more sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To view subscription options for The News and SportsDay, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON \u2014 The first open-wheel street race in North Texas in more than four decades went off like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2353,102,113,104,103,9801,2258,429],"class_list":["post-206387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-commentary","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-motor-sports","tag-other-sports","tag-texas-rangers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206387","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=206387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}