IndyCar Launches, Deletes Offensive T-Shirt From Its Online Store

IndyCar Launches, Then Deletes, Offensive T-ShirtIndycar - MotorTrend

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On the penultimate weekend of August, the streets around the National Mall will close for an event celebrating the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. The Freedom 250 Grand Prix will send race cars screaming down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Smithsonian, and around the National Archives. To mark the occasion, IndyCar also managed to approve a T-shirt with messaging so obviously disastrous that it is hard to understand how it made it through even the most basic review.

The shirt (archived here) read: “One Nation, One Race.” That no one in the approval chain stopped to consider how that slogan can be interpreted is staggering enough. That it was officially licensed by IndyCar makes it worse. One can assume this was not a one-person mistake and was instead signed off on by multiple people, making this an organizational failure.

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The timing only added to the ugliness. The shirt surfaced around Mexican IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward’s birthday. Last year, his car number was also “inadvertently” used in a Department of Homeland Security post about an Indianapolis immigration detention center.

The product description was also tone-deaf. It called the shirt the “perfect piece to wear!” and a “fun graphic tee” that was “going to be a piece that brings back great memories of this race.” When it first appeared, the shirt was listed for $50 before later being dropped to $19.99 and marked “sold out.”

One Reddit user, u/persononthedl, wrote, “What you really want is for your brand to get killed on social media at the start of your biggest month of the year. Great work everyone.” Another, u/IndycarFan65, said, “I have a small inkling this was in some way intentional,” while u/BvG_Venom mocked the approval process with, “Bunch of white guys in Indiana: ‘yeah, looks great.’” Several users said they had emailed the series to express their frustration that something this blatantly offensive had been allowed to go live at all.

Still, BlueSky user @tuckgraphics probably delivered the cleanest summary of the fiasco: “Oh my god. Indycar what are you doing.”

Photo credit: Indycar - MotorTrend

Photo credit: Indycar - MotorTrend

Photo credit: Indycar - MotorTrend

Eventually, someone at IndyCar realized the problem, but not before the shirt had been live long enough for social media to do what no one inside the company apparently could: identify an obvious disaster in plain sight. It reportedly took at least an hour for the shirt to be removed from the online store.

We have reached out to IndyCar for comment and will update this story when we receive a response.