From his perch seven stories above Pennsylvania Avenue, Jesse Vaughan had one of the most unusual views of a race he’s ever experienced.
Vaughan, Kyle Kirkwood’s spotter for Andretti Global, spent the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, DC, stationed on a balcony of the Federal Trade Commission building. From there, he could see down the circuit’s main straightaway and into Turn 2, watching Kirkwood speed through the heart of the nation’s capital. He communicated with him through a radio headset and a boom microphone.
His job was to be Kirkwood’s eyes where the driver couldn’t see, particularly as cars exited pit road and merged back into traffic.
“We spotted from the balcony of the Federal Trade Commission building on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Vaughan told RMNB. “We had to be on a list that was submitted ahead of time. Had to have our hard cards. Signed in every time we entered the building, and we got escorted to the seventh floor.
“There’s a cafe and lunch area there with doors to the balcony. I could see all the way down the main straight and into Turn 2. My main job was getting him off of pit road and through that section and keeping him aware of guys blending in front of us to not get trapped or run over.”
By Sunday evening, Vaughan’s observations and communications from above the course helped Kirkwood make history.
Kirkwood won the inaugural Freedom 250, taking the checkered flag 3.0906 seconds ahead of Christian Lundgaard after starting second behind polesitter and four-time IndyCar champion Alex Palou. Kirkwood led by more than 15 seconds at points before a late caution tightened the field and forced him to defend the lead one final time on the 1.7-mile, seven-turn street circuit.
For Vaughan, the victory had another layer of significance.
The Virginia native is not only a lifelong racing guy. He’s also a longtime Washington Capitals fan who spent the weekend working only a few blocks from the team’s home at Capital One Arena.
Vaughan grew up in Chester, Virginia, outside Richmond, where hockey first entered his life through the ECHL’s Richmond Renegades. He attended Renegades games as a kid in the 1990s, even as racing and baseball occupied much of his attention. When the Renegades eventually disappeared, he began watching the Capitals more closely on television.
The more hockey he watched, the more hooked he became.
Today, Vaughan lives in Moseley, Virginia, and Capitals hockey has become a family affair. He subscribes to a television package so he can watch the games, makes several trips to Washington each season, has taken friends to MedStar Capitals Iceplex for practices, and flies a Capitals flag outside his home during the season. Most importantly, his two sons, Caleb and Wyatt, have adopted the team, too.
“My kids both love the Caps,” Vaughan said. “It’s our thing. We don’t all agree on baseball teams, but the Caps we do.”
His favorite memories include Braden Holtby’s iconic save in Game 2 of the 2018 Stanley Cup Final, watching Alex Ovechkin anxiously wait through the final moments before the Capitals clinched their first championship, and seeing his kids receive pucks and fist bumps from Ovechkin and TJ Oshie during warmups.
He’s still chasing one experience on his hockey bucket list.
“I’m still trying to get glass seats for just one game,” he joked.
The Freedom 250 provided an unexpected collision of Vaughan’s two sporting worlds.
Capitals goaltender Logan Thompson and defenseman Matt Roy visited the circuit before the race and took high-speed rides in two-seat Indy cars. Vaughan saw that the players were participating but was too busy with his own responsibilities to make his way over to them.
“I saw they were doing it, but I couldn’t get around to meet them,” Vaughan said. “I was hoping we’d have some players around this weekend. Super cool they got to experience it.”
From Virginia short tracks to IndyCar
Long before Vaughan was guiding one of IndyCar’s championship contenders around Pennsylvania Avenue, racing was simply part of his childhood.
His father worked as a tire changer in NASCAR’s Cup and Busch Series during the 1990s and early 2000s and also worked with local teams at classic Virginia short tracks such as Southside Speedway, Langley Speedway, South Boston Speedway, and Old Dominion Speedway.
As Vaughan got older, he began going to tracks and race shops with his father. At first, his responsibilities weren’t very glamorous: cleaning and other grunt work. Eventually, he became a tire specialist for a Late Model team.
Then, at Martinsville Speedway roughly 15 years ago, Vaughan got handed a radio. His team was shorthanded, and his father — normally the spotter — was needed elsewhere.
“He handed me the radio and said, ‘I need to help down here. Go spot practice,’” Vaughan recalled.
Vaughan had never done it before. He simply repeated the phrases and instructions he had heard his father give drivers for years.
“The driver was happy,” he said. “The car was in one piece.”
That was enough.
Vaughan began spotting actual races the following season and quickly fell in love with the job. His climb in racing came gradually, built on short-track experience, relationships, and a willingness to seize opportunities whenever they arose.
In 2013, Virginia racer C.E. Falk III connected Vaughan with NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour standout George Brunnhoelzl III, who needed a spotter at Langley Speedway. Vaughan’s first race at that level — the Newport News Shipbuilding/BayPort Credit Union 150 on August 31, 2013 — nearly ended with a victory as Brunnhoelzl finished second.
When Freddie Kraft — now best known as Bubba Wallace’s NASCAR Cup Series spotter and a host on the popular Dirty Mo podcast Door, Bumper, Clear — moved on from Brunnhoelzl, Vaughan took over the job. The pair spent several years together and won seven races.
His network continued expanding from there.
Vaughan worked with Rev Racing, NASCAR’s diversity development organization, spotting its Late Model and K&N Series drivers. He worked with Sam Hunt before Hunt built what would become Sam Hunt Racing. He received advice from veteran Cup Series spotter Chris Lambert, who now works with Denny Hamlin, and eventually picked up opportunities in NASCAR’s national series.
By 2023, Vaughan had reached one of NASCAR’s most famous drivers.
Seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson selected Vaughan to spot for him during Johnson’s part-time return to NASCAR, including the Daytona 500. Asked that February who would replace his longtime spotter Earl Barban, Johnson answered simply, “Jesse Vaughan,” before noting Vaughan’s extensive experience in the Truck, Xfinity, and ARCA ranks.
But an entirely different networking opportunity four years earlier had opened the door to the other side of Vaughan’s racing career.
In 2019, when NASCAR’s K&N Series and IndyCar were both competing at World Wide Technology Raceway outside St. Louis, Vaughan made a point of introducing himself to IndyCar spotters. Months later, one of those connections called.
Would he be interested in spotting Turn 3 at the Indianapolis 500?
“Obviously, I said yes,” Vaughan recalled.
He was hired as a second spotter for James Hinchcliffe and Andretti Autosport. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the 2020 Indianapolis 500 from May to August, but when race day finally came, Vaughan was there.
The experience blew him away.
Andretti invited him back for the next two years, and eventually another chance encounter during Indianapolis 500 preparations changed his career again.
Vaughan had committed to spotting for Johnson in NASCAR in 2023, a schedule that included the Coca-Cola 600 on the same weekend as the Indianapolis 500. Unable to work Indy on race day, Vaughan asked Andretti if he could at least help during the opening week of practice.
He was assigned to spot Turn 3 for Kyle Kirkwood.
On Vaughan’s ride to the airport at the end of the week, Bryan Herta, Kirkwood’s race strategist for Andretti Global, called. The team had liked what it heard on the radio. More importantly, Kirkwood had, too.
Herta wanted to know if Vaughan would become Kirkwood’s full-time spotter in 2024.
Vaughan accepted.
“Kyle and I worked out some bugs our first year to get him fully comfortable, and by year’s end we were a machine,” Vaughan said. “He understands my inflection and when it’s time to go. He likes calm on the radio, so I try to stay as even-keeled as possible.”
That calmness became particularly important Sunday in Washington.
‘The last 50 laps were the longest of my life’
Vaughan liked what he saw from the Freedom 250 circuit immediately.
Rather than being a smooth, sterile street course, the Washington layout featured bumps, raised crosswalks, varying pavement surfaces, and difficult braking zones.
Those imperfections made it harder on the drivers — but Vaughan believed they also played directly into his team’s strengths.
“I thought the course was cool,” he said. “The bumps made it super interesting. The bumps at brake zones made the show. And the old versus new pavement made it tricky to get back to power. It wasn’t glass-smooth.
“That’s where our cars excel. The Andretti cars just take to the street courses so well. Plus, Kyle is the best on the streets.”
Kirkwood backed that confidence up immediately. He led the first two rounds of qualifying Saturday before Palou produced a blistering final lap to take pole position. Kirkwood nevertheless secured the outside of the front row.
Vaughan had quietly expected that kind of performance from the moment the Washington race was announced.
“Honestly, I thought we were going to win from the second the race got announced, but I didn’t want to say anything,” he said. “After practice and qualifying, though, I felt really good. But I’ve been doing this long enough to not get excited and jump early.”
That restraint became increasingly difficult as Sunday’s race unfolded.
Kirkwood eventually got to the front, while Vaughan focused on the small pieces of information that can make the difference from his spotter’s stand: gaps in traffic, cars leaving pit road, lapped drivers, and potential trouble developing ahead.
One of Vaughan’s favorite calls of the afternoon came after another strong stop from Kirkwood’s Andretti crew.
“Seeing our guys kill pit stops all day and being able to clear him out and say, ‘No pressure. Good stop, boys,’” Vaughan recalled.
His approach on the radio remained deliberately measured even as the possibility of victory became more real.
“I take pride in that,” Vaughan said. “Just even keel: ‘Good by 10, no pressure.’ I know he’s tired and hot and working his ass off. The last thing he needs is me screaming or getting worked up.”
Internally, Vaughan was considerably less relaxed.
“The last 50 laps were the longest of my life,” he said.
One of the tensest moments came when Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin crashed while fighting Kirkwood near the front. From his angle on the FTC balcony, Vaughan couldn’t initially identify the car.
“I couldn’t see the start of that,” he said. “I just saw a blue car hit the wall and my heart dropped.”
Another late yellow erased a Kirkwood advantage that had grown beyond 10 seconds. Kirkwood was now forced to restart with Christian Lundgaard and Will Power behind him on tires Vaughan believed gave his pursuers an advantage.
The spotter began calculating possibilities.
“First Kyle has to nail his restart,” Vaughan said. “Then when he gets to me, I need to anticipate which way Christian is gonna go to make a move so we don’t wad them up or lose the lead.”
There was no need.
Kirkwood launched cleanly, gave Lundgaard no opportunity to attack, and began pulling away again.
“Luckily, he had an amazing start,” Vaughan said, “and I was able to just give him a good gap to use his line into 2 and drive away.”
A sprint to Victory Lane
There was one problem with Vaughan’s spectacular seventh-floor vantage point: he couldn’t actually see the finish line.
As Kirkwood came past him after taking the white flag, Vaughan made his final checks. Once he knew the road ahead was clear, his race was effectively over.
So he ran.
“When he got the white and passed me on the last lap, I made sure we were clear, and I started running,” Vaughan said. “I got to the elevator as he crossed the line. Ran through the paddock and got to Victory Lane just after he jumped out of the car. So I was there with all my guys.”
What awaited him there made the day even more surreal.
President Donald Trump had waved the green flag to begin the race, and he and First Lady Melania Trump were there as Kirkwood’s team celebrated afterward. He stood next to Mario Andretti, considered one of the most accomplished drivers in motorsports history.
“Victory Lane was insane,” Vaughan said. “They had us turn the car around, and the president and First Lady are there waving at us and giving us the thumbs-up. Pretty surreal.”
There were hugs and high-fives, pictures, phone calls, and a flood of messages waiting on Vaughan’s phone.
One call mattered more than the others.
“I got to FaceTime my son, Caleb, and the Capitol dome is behind me,” Vaughan said. “Totally unreal. My face still hurts from smiling.”
For someone who grew up around Virginia short tracks, spent years working his way through NASCAR’s regional ladder, and once got his first chance at spotting simply because his father needed an extra set of hands, it was a remarkable place to end up.
And, fittingly, the victory came near the end of Vaughan’s own full-time racing career.
Away from the track, Vaughan has worked for UPS in Richmond for 23 years. His two sons play baseball year-round, and he wants to devote more time to them. He told Andretti before the Nashville race that 2026 would be his final season as a full-time spotter.
Vaughan has two more races remaining this season — the Grand Prix of Milwaukee Race 1 and 2 — and he isn’t completely closing the door on racing. The Indianapolis 500 could lure him back for an occasional appearance. He’d also be honored to spot for Johnson at his final race — the Daytona 500 next February.
But the weekly grind is coming to an end.
“I may go back and do the Indy 500 next year, but I won’t be spotting full-time,” Vaughan said. “I told the team in Nashville, so this past weekend and this weekend are kind of going-away parties. I’m trying to go out with a few more wins.”
He already got one of them at a place that could hardly have meant more.
Vaughan arrived in Washington as Kirkwood’s spotter and a Capitals fan who normally makes the trip north from Richmond to watch Ovechkin and company play at Capital One Arena.
This time, the sporting event, and some of the attention, belonged to him.
