Iowa Speedway has been waiting so long for its moment in the NASCAR spotlight — nearly 18 years — that the track surface needed a bit of a facelift before hosting its inaugural Cup Series race on Sunday night.
But as sometimes happens with cosmetic surgeries, the finished product resulted in a shocking appearance. It’s a good thing a racetrack can’t look at itself in the mirror, because, well …
“Probably the most interesting repave-ish thing we’ve seen,” two-time NASCAR champion Joey Logano said politely.
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Drivers were baffled after photos and videos of the 0.875-mile track emerged from a recent test session, which showed the bottom and middle lanes had been partially repaved with jet-black asphalt while the top had been left untouched. Fresh asphalt equals grip for race cars, and grip equals speed; therefore, no driver will likely dare to race on the older part of the pavement this weekend.
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— B R A D E N (@TheBraden_) May 28, 2024
“It just completely ruined the corners, and it’s going to make it a one-groove racetrack,” said Christopher Bell, who was one of the drivers to test at Iowa last month. “… If you have to do that, they absolutely needed to repave the whole thing. Because now literally the top half of the track is completely useless and it will remain useless until it gets repaved.”
“In my mind, you either leave it or you pave the whole thing,” defending NASCAR champion Ryan Blaney said. “… You had two choices, and I would have been fine with both choices. And they went with the third choice. That doesn’t really make much sense to me.”
Kevin Harvick, the retired NASCAR champion who is now an analyst for Fox Sports, went a step further on his “Happy Hours” podcast this week and called it “one of the biggest F-ups in the whole year.”
So what happened? Why would NASCAR, which owns Iowa Speedway, do this sort of odd partial repave? Jerry Kaproth, NASCAR’s manager of racetrack infrastructure standards, told The Athletic it was simply a matter of timing.
NASCAR announced Iowa would join the 2024 Cup Series schedule last October, and there was no intention to touch the surface at the time. Worn-out pavement makes for better racing, and Iowa’s progressive banking configuration was already beloved by drivers.
But after a track inspection revealed some of the lower grooves were badly damaged from moisture getting trapped underneath the surface, it was clear the track needed to be repaved. Unfortunately, it was so late in the fall that colder Midwestern weather had become a factor.
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“We need it so warm for the pavement to go down,” Kaproth said. “You have to mill it, put the tack down and then the pavement on top. You’ve got to have the paving company working and it’s momentum-driven. So if you get to the end and it’s too cold and they’re not going to pave anymore for the year, then what?”
So NASCAR decided to hold off until the weather warmed in the spring, but that didn’t leave enough time to pave the entire track before a mandatory tire confirmation test in late May. Officials identified the areas that were absolute musts for a repave, and it came down to “How much can you get done and what can you get done?” Kaproth said.
The result was enough pavement to fix the damaged areas, but its Frankenstein-esque appearance may not exactly be aesthetically pleasing.
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“Definitely unique,” Logano said, being polite again.
How will it affect the racing? Well, no one can say for sure — other than to predict all the cars will be fighting to stay on the grip strips as much as possible, since that will be the fastest way around the track.
Denny Hamlin noted drivers might be able to “force whoever is on top of you into the not-so-good grip,” which could make for some interesting battles. And Chase Elliott said he watched teammate Kyle Larson’s in-car camera footage from the Iowa test and realized the paved area was “wider than what was described to me.”
“Originally, I thought it was just like literally the width of a car and I was like, ‘Man, this is just silly. Why did we even repave it?'” he said. “It looks like you could potentially at least have a second groove, which would be better than one. But anything outside of that bottom area of fresh asphalt, it’s too aged at this point (to race on).”
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Either way, Iowa sold out its grandstand seats for Sunday’s Cup Series race and Saturday’s Xfinity Series race months ago. The track only seats approximately 30,000 fans, but the atmosphere should be electric for NASCAR’s big weekend.
“I remember going there (in the lower series) and for whatever reason, I remember fans always talking about how bad they wanted a Cup race,” Elliott said. “So I’m just excited they finally got a Cup race. It’s been a worthy facility for a long time and whatever the reason may be or however long we go, it’s good they have done things right over the years. They got one and hopefully they make the most of it.”
(Photo of the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Iowa in June 2018: Robert Laberge / Getty Images)
Jeff Gluck has been traveling on the NASCAR beat since 2007, with stops along the way at USA Today, SB Nation, NASCAR Scene magazine and a Patreon-funded site, JeffGluck.com. He's been hosting tweetups at NASCAR tracks around the country since 2009 and was named to SI's Twitter 100 (the top 100 Twitter accounts in sports) for five straight years.
