NEWTON, Iowa – “If you build it, they will come” is among the most famous mantras in Iowa, but the motto hits a little differently for the state’s NASCAR Infield of Dreams.
Iowa Speedway, the 0.8-mile oval designed by NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace, opened in 2006 to rave reviews and heightened anticipation of the primary reason for its existence – securing a Cup Series date for a Midwestern fan base desperate for more than a half century to celebrate a major-league race that embodies the region’s legendary passion for motorsports.
Nearly 18 years later, it’s finally here.
Tonight at the track that literally rises from the cornfields that are ubiquitous in America’s breadbasket, the best racers of NASCAR will deliver a 350-lap show with the brand of racing that Heartland race fans have come to expect, whether it’s been dirt late models at Sharon Speedway, sprint cars at Knoxville Raceway or stock cars at Slinger Speedway.
A winner at myriad Midwestern dirt tracks for the past 15 years, Kyle Larson knows the passion well and is glad that the thirst finally is being quenched.
“Yeah, I think Midwestern fans – not only from Iowa, but all the other states around this region -- are really into racing, whether it be sprint cars, midgets, dirt late models, stock cars,” said the 2021 Cup Series champion, who of course has won in all of those vehicles. “And I think they’ve been starving for a race, a Cup race especially, here.
“Yeah, I think all of us, even drivers, across the board, we were all really happy to get a Cup race here. We probably all wish it would have come earlier so we could have raced on the older pavement, but regardless, I think it’s great for this fan base.”
Today’s race (6:30 p.m. ET, USA) will mark the 25th race in NASCAR’s premier series to be run on a Midwestern short track but the first in nearly 68 years in the 12-state area (which comprises Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and the Dakotas).
The last time NASCAR held a short track race in the Midwest, Fireball Roberts was the winner July 21, 1956 at Soldier Field in Chicago.
The region hardly has been neglected since with Cup races at Michigan International Speedway (since 1968), Indianapolis Motor Speedway (since 1994) and Kansas Speedway (since 2001). Last year after a 2001-19 run at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Illinois, NASCAR chose downtown Chicago as the site of the first street race in the 75-year history of the Cup Series.
But Iowa has been a notable omission until now despite its reputation as a racing hotbed.
Just like bountiful corn, presidential caucuses, and Caitlin Clark, motor racing is synonymous with the state smack dab in the center of the country. The annual Knoxville Nationals, which are held about 45 minutes south of here, widely is considered to be the biggest sprint car event in the world – an extravaganza that has drawn star drivers from Down Under.
Iowa Speedway began playing host to the Xfinity Series in 2009, and its inaugural race drew a sellout crowd of more than 50,000 (with temporary grandstands needed) in another reminder of the Midwest’s fervent support.
“We’re very lucky growing up in the Midwest, that you can kind of throw a rock and hit a short track somewhere,” said JR Motorsports veteran Justin Allgaier, a Riverton, Illinois, native who has started 17 of Iowa’s Xfinity races. “Every Friday and Saturday night, you can go race. And a lot of these facilities are like (Iowa Speedway), they’re in rural areas where there’s a lot of farming going on. I feel like that blue collar working family is really what has grown this sport over the last decades of racing, and these are the type of racetracks where every Friday and Saturday night, I grew up going or watching racing.
“It’s a lot of farming going on up and down the interstate right around here. The fans come out in droves. From a driver standpoint and from a fan standpoint, I feel like this track checks all the boxes.”
Several Cup drivers already have personal connections to Iowa. Start with Larson, who has raced the past two nights at Knoxville (where he won the premier event in 2021). Ricky Stenhouse Jr. took his Cup team to Knoxville last night to watch his World of Outlaws team race Knoxville.
Defending Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney, whose mother, Lisa, is a native Iowan born and raised an hour south of Des Moines, has more than 80 family members and friends camping in Turn 1 this weekend and watching the race from seats in Turn 4.
“Gosh, I’ve been wanting a Cup race here for a long time,” said Blaney, whose father, Dave, was an Outlaws champion and the son of a sprint car legend from Ohio. “They do a good job here. The fan base here is very loyal to motorsports. I know they were really upset when Xfinity went away and trucks and we lost them for a couple of years, and they were upset. It’s just good to come back. I think it’s important to have these tracks in the Midwest. It’s a huge fan base out here. People love NASCAR, people love motorsports out here in this area of the country. They deserve to have a big race come to their area.
As deserving as the Southeastern fans who have enjoyed Martinsville, Bristol and Richmond for years.
“We get to see all types of (fans) through country, and they’re all dedicated and passionate, just a little bit different accents,” Blaney said. “But they all love racing, and I think when you come to these places where you don’t normally go, it makes it for more excitement for these people. They might not be able to travel to other states to go see a race, and if it’s in their home state, they can drive a couple hours down the road, and they’re going to see a big race in a Cup event. So it definitely means a ton, and it definitely means a lot to them when we can bring it somewhere close to them. They might not be able to travel to other places. So if we can bring it to their home, that’s even better.”
A Cup race at Iowa Speedway seemed far from a certainty for a long time.
Opening just after NASCAR’s mid-2000s peak, the track lobbied many years (with the support of Midwestern champions Rusty Wallace and Brad Keselowski) for a visit from the premier series, but NASCAR executives cited an already full calendar as the primary reason a date wasn’t granted.
With the Xfinity and truck series, as well as the IndyCar Series since 2007, Iowa Speedway just kept plugging along. Without a lucrative Cup race to service the debt load for the millions needed to construct the track, questions emerged about its long-term financial security.
Shortly after failing to land an $8 million grant from the state to make capital improvements, Iowa Speedway was sold to NASCAR for $10 million in November 2013.
But NASCAR’s national series left the track after the 2019 season, and after an IndyCar doubleheader in 2020 with a limited crowd during the pandemic, the facility sat unused in 2021.
With the massive marketing support of Des Moines-based HyVee grocery store chain, the track roared back to life in July 2022. A smash IndyCar doubleheader weekend in conjunction with a star-packed music festival (featuring Tim McGraw, Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton; Ed Sheeran and Kenny Chesney headlined last year) resurrected Iowa Speedway as a viable racing destination.
When NASCAR’s efforts to put a Cup race in Montreal fell through, Iowa finally gained a Cup race when the 2024 schedule was announced last fall.
Though the race could be viewed as a NASCAR backup plan, it’s being hailed as one of the most important stops of the season by its star drivers.
“It’s a huge event for our sport at a track that has paid a lot of dues,” Keselowski said. “It’s finally having its day. It’s exciting to see that on a number of levels. Geographically, I think it’s an important market for us as we kind of transcend the discourse of political conversations that are going on with coastal cities and everything else that’s going on. You start to lose sight of that NASCAR is not just a coastal sport or a regional sport. It’s a national sport, and it’s important to really live that out and I think we’re doing that by racing here in Iowa.”
Today will be the second Cup race in Iowa and the first since Aug. 2, 1953 at Davenport Speedway. That half-mile dirt track is located in the Quad Cities area on the Iowa-Illinois border.
Iowa Speedway is in the heart of the Hawkeye State in a city that once was famous for being the worldwide headquarters of the Maytag appliance company.
“It’s pretty much the exact middle of the country,” said Keselowski, who grew up in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills, Michigan. “If I was throwing a dart at a dart board, probably as close as you could get to the center would be Iowa, and I think that’s important. There’s a lot of great race fans here that for a long time have been somewhat under represented with the (Cup) tracks that they’re around or that they get to go to.
Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing teammate Chris Buescher, who made his Iowa Speedway debut with the 2009 ARCA race, noticed the enthusiasm during the Friday track walk hours before race cars were on track.
“We’ve got fans yelling over the fence at everybody walking by saying, ‘Thanks for coming. We’re glad you’re here. We’ve been waiting for this,’” Buescher said. ‘It’s very early in the weekend and we’ve already got people yelling out and showing support, so that’s really cool for this entire place. I love this racetrack since the first time I’ve come out here.”
Said Keselowski: “It shows a pent-up demand. I think it’s important to go where you’re wanted and it’s very clear that here in Iowa, NASCAR is wanted. Beyond that, I’m glad it’s not another road course. It seems like every time we add a new venue, (it’s) ‘Oh, a road course.’ It’s nice to add a new venue to this sport that’s an actual stock car-esque track and that’s clearly what Iowa is, so I’m really pumped for this community. I’m glad to see a community that pays its dues get a race. Michigan is still a pretty long ways away from Iowa, but there’s still a lot of relatability that I have to this area and to the fan base here.”
With Knoxville holding a tune-up this weekend for the Nationals, Midwest motorsports fans already had a reason to be in Iowa – especially with a star attraction at the state’s most famous dirt track.
After winning the pole position for the inaugural Cup race at Iowa Speedway, Larson hustled to Knoxville and sublimely charged from 10th to first in Friday’s 25-lap A main before an engine rod failed. He returned Saturday to finish third in the feature race.
“It’s awesome that Knoxville Raceway is racing this weekend, too,” he said. “It’s one of the final tune-ups for traveling (sprint car) teams to get ready for the Knoxville Nationals. If you aren’t a sprint car fan, you can go there and catch some awesome racing, and get introduced to that side of motorsports, too. It’s a cool weekend for Midwestern race fans.”
Undoubtedly, those fans will be hoping it won’t be one and done.
Though NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Steve O’Donnell has given strong indications that the Cup Series will return next year, the 2025 schedule likely is weeks (if not months) from being announced, and several new venues reportedly are candidates for inaugural events.
With a “half-repave” (as Stenhouse called it), Iowa Speedway has been given a minor facelift with fresh asphalt laid in its turns for this weekend.
Drivers have warned it’ll be difficult to race from the wall to the white line as they have in previous years, and it’s raised concerns that a lackluster race could diminish the track’s chances of a second Cup event.
“Well, the fact that there isn’t pavement from top to bottom probably doesn’t help the uncertainty of what this looks like for 2025 and beyond,” Allgaier said. “As somebody that’s come here basically since it’s opened, it would be really disappointing if it kind of is a flash and goes away after a year. We all know that resurfaces are really hard to manage.
“Even if the new pavement isn’t exactly what we want, I hope that we get some time on it and let it kind of season in and get a couple years down the road before we jump to conclusions and (say), ‘Hey, this isn’t where we need to have a Cup race,’ because I do feel like it has all the right features to make a good Cup race. This place, I always say it races like California (Speedway) If we could have a short track that raced like a big track, that literally would answer all the problems that we have on the aero side of things.”
In the meantime, there will be a Cup driver who can lay claim today to being the first winner of a Cup race in Iowa since Hall of Famer Herb Thomas.
Blaney naturally is hoping it’s him – as are several dozen others hailing from Chariton, Iowa (who also jammed the stands to watch Lisa Blaney’s son race Xfinity at Iowa Speedway in 2012-15).
“We bought a lot of tickets,” Blaney said with a laugh. “So yeah, it’s just nice to have a track where part of your family is from, and they come out and support it. It’s nice they all came back and are hanging out all weekend, so definitely it’s a very special weekend from that side of it. Hopefully, we can capitalize, and it would be fun to celebrate.”
After all, if you win it … they also will come.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get 80 of them across the racetrack if we win the race. But we’ll try to figure it out.”
Cup short track races in the Midwest
—Most recent: July 21, 1956 at Soldier Field in Chicago
—First on pavement: June 25, 1950 at Dayton Speedway in Dayton, Ohio
—First on dirt: May 30, 1950 at Canfield Speedway in Canfield, Ohio
—Midwestern short tracks (prior Iowa Speedway) with Cup races:
Bainbridge Speedway, Bainbridge, Ohio
Canfield Speedway, Canfield, Ohio
Davenport Speedway, Davenport, Iowa
Dayton Speedway, Dayton, Ohio
Fort Miami Speedway, Toledo, Ohio
Grand Rapids Speedway, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Lincoln City Fairgrounds,North Platte, Nebraska
Monroe Speedway, Monroe, Michigan
Michigan Fairgrounds, Detroit
Playland Park Speedway, South Bend, Indiana
Powell Motor Speedway, Columbus, Ohio
Rapid Valley Speedway, Rapid City, South Dakota
Sharon Speedway, Hartford, Ohio
Santa Fe Speedway, Willow Springs, Illinois
Soldier Field, Chicago, Illinois
Winchester Speedway, Winchester, Indiana
