The 2024 NASCAR Cup season saw Iowa Speedway make its debut on the top-tier series. While the track had hosted Truck and Xfinity races before, it was a big deal when the Cup Series rolled in. The race was a hit. Packed grandstands, a dominant win for Ryan Blaney, and a pretty solid time for everyone involved. But, just when things seemed to be going well, it stirred up some serious frustration. First with IndyCar fans, then now with NASCAR fans, too.

So what happened was… NASCAR didn’t even think about Iowa Speedway until late in 2023. Up until then, it had been IndyCar’s show, and the track consistently pulled in big crowds. To make things more complicated, NASCAR owns Iowa Speedway but leases it to the Roger Penske-owned IndyCar series. It’s been a big hit for IndyCar, which runs a doubleheader there every year. But NASCAR, wanting some of that action, jumped in. But in doing so, managed to upset both fan bases.

NASCAR gives Iowa Speedway’s repave update!

Here’s where things went sideways. NASCAR decided to run a Cup race at Iowa late in October 2023. But there wasn’t enough time for a full repave of the track before the race was set to green flag in June 2024. So, they went with a half-pave job, repaving the lower lanes in Turns 1 and 2, as well as Turns 3 and 4. This gave the track more grip on the bottom but left the higher lanes with much less traction. For stock cars, it worked fine. But for IndyCar, it was another story. After their race, Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward called it a “snoozefest.”

The problem was that passing was reduced drastically. During the 2nd race weekend in 2023 at Iowa, there were 1,168 total passes with 379 for position. But that number was 204 on-track passes with 95 for position in 2024. However, those were IndyCar’s and Roger Penske‘s troubles and the NASCAR community was unbothered. The Cup race was fine, everyone understood that the half repave was done due to time constraints. And that NASCAR would do it fully ahead of the next one!

But after the recent update from NASCAR, that doesn’t seem to be the case. NASCAR Journalist Jordan Bianchi in an X post wrote, “Iowa Speedway track president Eric Peterson says there will be “no major adjustments to the track surface” in advance of its August NASCAR weekend. Also, Peterson anticipates Iowa again being a sellout, with it trending that tickets will be gone sometime in March.”

Top Comment by KAM

The track needs to be fully repaved. Anything else is unacceptable. Indy Car has run some amazing races there, prior to last...more

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Debate

This decision seems to have come as the race was a success. And NASCAR doesn’t want to touch it or make any changes. But fans disagree with this. They are demanding a full repave for the 2025 season.

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NASCAR fans lash out after the announcement

Well, according to NASCAR’s vice president of competition, Elton Sawyer, repaving was never in their plan. Neither a full repave nor a partial one. They wanted to give fans the raw feel of Iowa as it had always been. But when they ran tire tests, it did not work out, and they decided to repave where it was the worst. Sawyer had said, “Again, our goal all along was not to do that. We wanted our fans to be able to see that track and a race where all the surface had been worn. But that just wasn’t going to be the case.”

But fans feel that since they have done it halfway, why not complete the job? A fan wrote, “Well that’s a big disappointment cause it needs a repave.” The fan is right, the track has been racing regularly since 2006, that’s almost two decades. So repaving is almost the need of the hour. And another fan echoing the same emotion thought NASCAR got lucky with this one.

They wrote, “Well, that’s disappointing that they didn’t do a repave. They got by luckily but if the racing didn’t do good it would have been one and done.” Maybe if Cup cars crashed running the top lane since there wasn’t any grip, probably we’d see a full repave in process. But since it worked out, it’s been postponed indefinitely.

Sawyer had also said, “After we had scheduled tire test, there just wasn’t enough time to go in there and completely do a full repave.” This means had there been time, a full repave was in the plans. These are two very contradicting statements. But in any case, like this fan said, “Leaving a track half paved makes no sense 🤷‍♂” They had the whole second half of the 2024 season plus before the 2025 race to do it fully.

Maybe NASCAR did not want to invest a whole lot of money in a relatively smaller racing market. Iowa Speedway is a relatively small market, with 30,000 permanent seats. It doesn’t have any major pro sports teams nearby, and the closest big city is Des Moines, which doesn’t exactly bring in huge crowds. And is small by Cup Series standards. So why invest?

Also, this other fan had some intense emotions, but his idea to get a full repave done might be the last resort. The fan wrote, “Anyone running a track with a half a–ed repave like that, should be fired. Hopefully Indycar doesn’t go back after this year, because that race is going to be awful on that surface.” But IndyCar still has the doubleheader on its schedule this season, even after a poor race product last season. If they completely abandon the track. Maybe NASCAR would be forced to do the repave. Because they wouldn’t want to lose out on the revenue stream.

And one repave opposed to years of lease seems like a good trade-off. And one fan thinks they are not doing it on purpose. They wrote, “that track is gonna be ruined for years if they don’t fix it right imo (altho maybe that’s their goal 😟).”  Well, they would do that is puzzling… but in any case, a full repave is the way to go!

What do you think? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.