Here are a few things you need to know for this weekend’s inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix: All race qualifying will be held Friday. It’s best to use mass transit to get to the race course in downtown Baltimore. If you are coming from Washington, take the train to Penn Station and then take light rail to downtown. Buy your tickets online at BaltimoreGrandPrix.com to save time and hassle.
This is a two-mile street course, so it is impossible to see the entire track. The best place to watch the race is near the turns. You can see the drivers’ faces as they downshift through the corners. Speed junkies should watch in the grandstand on the straightaways.
In the American Le Mans Series event at 4 p.m. on Saturday, you can see all four classes of cars — Le Mans Prototype, Le Mans Prototype Challenge, Grand Touring and Grand Touring Challenge — in the same race. The cars in this series include Aston Martin, Audi R18, Peugeot 908, BMW M3, Corvette C6.R, Ferrari F458 GT, Ford GT-R, Jaguar RSR XKR GT, Lamborghini Gallardo, Panoz Abruzzi and Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. Coverage of the race is live on ESPN3 and on the radio at 1370 AM.
The IndyCar Series’ Baltimore Grand Prix will be seen nationally on Versus at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Brazilian Tony Kanaan, who drives the No. 82 Lotus, is one of the drivers excited about racing in Maryland’s biggest city.
“This is a driver’s course. You really have to concentrate because there is no room for error,” Kanaan said. “No matter how well you pave the city streets — and I am sure that the city did a fine job — they are all still city streets. A road course like mid-Ohio has a surface that is smooth and consistent. There is no way you get that on a city street. Then you have no room to make a mistake, or you will hit a concrete barrier. So I love running street courses, and I think that Baltimore will be a fun place to run because it is not for the faint of heart. It will be a great race for the fans and the drivers alike.”
Examiner columnist Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this!, on washingtonexaminer.com.
