Live Sports · August 23, 2026

Kirkwood wins the first-ever Freedom 250 on the National Mall

IndyCar raced past the Washington Monument for the first time — a wreck-filled debut that aired free, over the air, on FOX. No cable required.

By Bear & Rick Baron — a father-and-son AV install team, 78 combined years in the field · Published August 23, 2026

The result Kyle Kirkwood led almost flag-to-flag to win the inaugural Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. — the first NTT INDYCAR SERIES race ever run on the National Mall — surviving a rash of late cautions and a hard crash to hold off Christian Lundgaard and Will Power. Championship leader Alex Palou started on pole but was shuffled down the order. And here's the part we care about at Untangled: the whole thing was on FOX, free over the air — a $30 antenna caught all 250 miles in crisp HD. No cable box required.

What happened

History first: this was the first time an Indy car has ever turned a wheel in anger on the streets of the nation's capital — a 1.7-mile, seven-turn temporary circuit laid out around the National Mall, with the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol as the backdrop, run as one of the marquee events of America's 250th anniversary. Admission was free to the public.

On track, it was Kirkwood's day nearly wire to wire. He put the No. 27 Andretti Global car out front early and led the vast majority of the 147 laps, controlling restart after restart on a bumpy, unforgiving street course everyone had warned would be "chaos." Alex Palou arrived with a commanding points lead and took pole in the No. 10 Chip Ganassi car, but a scrappy afternoon dropped him out of contention up front.

The drama came from behind him. A hard crash saw David Malukas hit the wall, and Sting Ray Robb then collided with the stopped car — one of several incidents that kept the yellow flag busy, including cautions inside the final 25 laps that erased Kirkwood's cushion and set up green-flag sprints to the flag. Each time, Kirkwood pulled away again, with Lundgaard shadowing him and Will Power rounding out the podium.

PosDriverCar
1Kyle Kirkwood#27
2Christian Lundgaard—
3Will Power#26

Full finishing order and championship math to follow once official results post.

The part nobody tells you: it was free

Here's the cord-cutter angle we always come back to. A marquee, first-of-its-kind national broadcast — and it aired on FOX, a free, over-the-air network. If you have a $30 antenna in the window, you watched the Freedom 250 in full HD for exactly nothing, no monthly bill attached. FOX's biggest live events — NFL, IndyCar, MLB, college football — all come down the same free pipe.

How to catch races like this without cable:
  • Local networks (FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC): a one-time $30 antenna pulls them in free, in HD, forever. This is where a huge share of live sports actually airs.
  • Cable channels you still want (ESPN, FS1, etc.): a live-TV app like Sling, YouTube TV, or Fubo — month-to-month, cancel anytime, no box rental.
  • The full picture for your ZIP: our quiz maps your must-watch teams and races to the cheapest legal combo below.

Why a DC race matters to us

We install AV and cord-cutting setups across the DC metro, so a race run on the Mall is a hometown event. It's also the perfect example of the point we make in every consultation: before anyone signs up for a cable package "for the sports," we check what's actually free over the air first. More often than not, the antenna plus one streaming app covers everything a household actually watches — for a fraction of the cable bill.

Find the cheapest way to watch your sports — take the free 2-minute quiz →

Sources

FOX Sports — Freedom 250 live leaderboard · IndyCar — Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. · Freedom 250 Grand Prix — Washington, DC (official)