IndyCar paddock 'kinda sad' to be back at Iowa Speedway. Series tries to improve races since repave

Indianapolis Star

11-07-2025

DES MOINES, Iowa — 'You know me, and I try not to be negative, but …'
That was Graham Rahal, IndyCar's serial optimist and most fervent supporter, as he began to envision what his next three days at Iowa Speedway were likely to be. The sigh, followed by a second or so pause and then the "but" hit like a stack of bricks as the series prepares to tackle two of the remaining seven rounds on the calendar in the span of 24 hours at a track that proved 18 months ago it's simply not the priority.
Because the repave — well, partial repave — on the bottom lane in the turns before 2024, a decision made unilaterally to try and prop up the racing prospects of the NASCAR Cup series' debut at the track the sanctioning body has owned since 2013 but hadn't raced at until 2024, did nothing but set IndyCar's race-ability back four years or so, a waiting game it simply may not be able to afford.
Two years ago, coincidentally in a doubleheader race weekend swept by Team Penske's Josef Newgarden — the King of Corn whose won five of seven races at Iowa from 2019 to 2023 — IndyCar put on a banger of a race weekend, action that elevated itself to the level of the A-list concerts that bookended the racing both days. IndyCar's 500 laps of action at the track that weekend hosted a combined 2,670 total on-track passes, 698 of those for position.
Put simply: On a track where race-leader lap times hover around either side of 20 seconds or so, race fans could watch an average of more than five passes every lap, or more than 15 every minute. Every lap, on average, you'd see more than one pass that would lead to a shakeup in the leaderboard, too.
Indeed, it marked a notably higher number of passing action that weekend — doubleheaders in 2022 (1,584 total on-track passes, 634 for position) and 2020 (1,103 total on-track passes, 408 for position) — but it continued a trend of what in recent years had increasingly become one of IndyCar's most action-packed tracks and must-watch TV, particularly when it slotted into a Saturday night window.
Now, series officials have thrown the proverbial kitchen sink at this race weekend, hoping something will stick.
With few exceptions, the more than dozen IndyCar drivers and team and series officials IndyStar spoke to for this story, enter this weekend in Newton, Iowa — one that some believe could (or should) mark the end of IndyCar's history, for now at least, at "the fastest short track on the planet" — are expecting little, if anything at all.
'I don't feel great about it. I feel like the track needs a complete repave if they want to get it back,' Rahal told IndyStar Thursday afternoon at the race weekend-opening luncheon. 'It's a shame, because it was a great track, and if they could repave the whole thing, it could be great again, but just one lane, and you create what you created.'
Said Alexander Rossi earlier this month on his podcast, "Off Track with Hinch and Rossi": 'None of this is IndyCar's fault. None of it whatsoever is Firestone's fault. We just got absolutely bamboozled by another track repave, and it's really sad, because we all know what Iowa was, and it'll never get back to that.'
If this is to be the end, IndyCar and its partners have made a point not to go out without a fight. Their punch of sorts comes with a wholesale package change compared to last year, including a different approach to tires, power levels and allowable downforce, in hopes of allowing for drivers to not only find some level of comfort running a second lane in the corners of the 0.875-mile where any passes that take place typically happen, but for running that second lane to be quick enough in comparison, even in select race conditions, to allow for the possibility of some passing.
Because what the paving of that bottom lane at Iowa Speedway did for Indy cars there is this: Provided an almost indescribable level of grip on what already is the shortest distance way to travel around the track, allowing drivers to hug the white line painted on the bottom of the racing surface and slingshot around the track. Without similar grip levels on the next lane up — which remains the old, weathered, non-grippy surface of old — not only is someone running it having to travel a slightly longer distance around the track, they don't have the grip allowing them to keep their foot in the gas at near the same level.
Combine that with tires that Firestone felt needed to be ultra-durable in order to handle the extreme speeds and loads experienced running the new grippy surface at pace, and IndyCar had only one lane viable to run and tires that almost didn't degrade at all. And so in the face of that, drivers and teams opted to aim to make just two pit stops, instead of the typical three or four, forcing them into fuel saves from the drop of the green flag. And so last year's doubleheader was filled with 500 laps of cars running at less than full bore, largely single file and in most cases unable to even get around cars that were prepared to be lapped.
Combined across both races, IndyCar delivered just 396 combined passes, only 195 of those for position.
'It's the most boring thing I've ever done,' said three-time IndyCar champion Alex Palou following his podium performance in Race No. 2. 'It's like putting a Moto GP race on dirt. (Iowa) is a cool track, but you cannot put it on the same and expect a very nice race.'
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IndyCar since has significantly changed the way in which teams will produce downforce with their cars from the underwing to the rear wing. In theory, the series said in a bulletin this week, it should produce aerodynamic drag for a leading car and the potential for a trailing car to both follow more closely and, ideally, gain momentum to attempt a run around the outside for a pass.
So as not to reach dangerously high speeds and load levels on the cars, engines will be set to lower boost levels (1.3 bar) than is typical for any races other than the Indianapolis 500, making for a package that last September at Nashville Superspeedway for the season finale was trial run with large amounts of success.
In addition to this high-downforce, low-boost package that more than 20 cars across the 27-car field tested two weeks ago, Firestone has also provided a right front tire with the same compound but different construction from last year's race and the recent test in order to offer a tire capable of managing higher loads after Christian Rasmussen suffered a heavy crash at the test spurred by a right front tire failure.
Other drivers in attendance at the test have told IndyStar more tire failures would've happened if not for keen attention to tire temps that began spiking on the right front not long after the test day got rolling.
Weather permitting, IndyCar has also scheduled a 40-minute high-line session practice Friday afternoon where the field will be split into halves, which will run a pair of 10-minute practice sessions above the recently repaved section in order to lay down rubber, and therefore grip up, the higher lanes on the track — an action at other short tracks on the schedule has aided in developing multi-lane running in recent years.
In a perfect world, paddock sources explained to IndyStar, a slightly weathered surface, a package that prioritizes the trailing car's building runs on cars ahead and an upper lane with at least some grip could allow for even marginal increases to available passing opportunities compared to 2024. IndyCar has also tacked on an additional 25 laps onto each race in hopes of taking the opportunity of a two-stop fuel-save strategy away.
Initial reviews of the package by many drivers at the test earlier this summer were largely skeptical.
'At the test, we were trying all sorts of different stuff. We were trying everything we could — IndyCar, as well as the teams — to try and get a package that was going to be better, but I don't think we found it,' Palou said last weekend. 'It's just super easy to be consistent for 60 laps, where you're not 100% flat, but you're on the limit, so when you're behind somebody, you lose so much and the (lack of tire degradation) doesn't let you do a different strategy.
'It requires so much risk from us just to get a small chance, and normally you lose five spots whenever you try, so we all just stay (on the bottom lane). It doesn't look great.'
Last year, veteran driver and IndyCar team co-owner Ed Carpenter said that running the second lane in even the best conditions would be roughly one second slower per lap than someone running the low line on similar tires and fuel. In previous iterations of the track without a high-grip lower lane, drivers hugging the bottom would have to lift while doing so, meaning running the higher lane and arcing through the turns might allow one to stay mostly (or even just more) flat on the gas through the turns, allowing someone to carry more speed and therefore have a better shot at executing a pass.
And even then, often times notable sequences of passes in bunches wouldn't come (outside restarts) until tire life began to wane and a driver with newer tires could prove to be undoubtedly faster than one with significantly worn ones running the low line. The educated belief throughout the paddock is that creating tires that would produce notable wear could put the paddock at risk for tire failures from being exposed to the high-load levels of running on such a grippy surface.
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'It's not that the repave is responsible for (Iowa) being one lane. What's responsible for it being one lane is that there's no tire deg, and there's no tire deg because of the repave,' Rossi told IndyStar. 'There would only be a second lane at 'old Iowa' when people started slowing down by eight-tenths (of a second) or even a second or two, but until then, the first lane would still be preferable.
'And then, when people started falling off a cliff, the second lane would open up cause you could get around them.'
The reason such a package worked at Nashville, Rossi said, was that track lacked this uber-optimal lower lane, so the combination of the lower boost and the higher downforce that produced drag for a leading car did exactly what you'd want it to. But that grippy bottom lane has just led to cars nearly able to run flat through the shortest distance around the track — and then keep doing so for 60 laps or more doing little more than burning fuel and making the car lighter and keeping it virtually as fast aided by very little tire wear.
Pato O'Ward, who won at Iowa in 2022 and who has finished on the podium in four of his last six starts at the track, has tested at Iowa Speedway twice since last year's race, including one trip for a Firestone tire-specific test with Andretti Global's Colton Herta, last fall.
At that test, O'Ward told IndyStar Firestone brought a compound that he believed offered notable levels of degradation, albeit in conditions a bit dissimilar than a steamy July afternoon. Though others in the paddock have explained that racing high-deg tires on a super grippy surface could lead to ones that just can't reliably stand up to the loads they'd face over race-length stints, O'Ward remains irked at feeling as if he'd found a solution, only to seemingly be ignored by Firestone and IndyCar in the wake of last year's test.
'It was basically an alternate (tire), and it degged a lot, and that's what I said would produce the best racing,' O'Ward told IndyStar. '(Running that tire) was reminiscent of what 'old Iowa' was, and Firestone still decided to bring (a tire) that doesn't deg. What's the point of doing these Firestone tire tests if they're not going to listen to me?
'It's frustrating, knowing we definitely found a bit of a better tire. I feel like there was a bit of an answer, at least to make it better than it's been, and I just felt like it wasn't even acknowledged.'
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Count Team Penske's Will Power, who won last year's second race of IndyCar's Iowa Speedway weekend, among those who continues to hold out legitimate hope for a better-than-expected race weekend. The two-time series champ spoke of running a half stint at last month's test and already beginning to feel some deg, something he believes to have been brought on by a surface that experienced notable wear during Iowa's harsh winter and freeze-thaw spring cycles.
Whereas some are hoping Iowa Speedway officials might consider repaving the entire track, Power doesn't want it touched any more. 'Let it all weather,' he told IndyStar. 'Unless you can resurface it all and falsely age it.
'Yes, the resurfacing is a real pity, but it's already starting to come back, and it's only going to keep getting closer to what we used to have.'
Others have characterized the state of Iowa Speedway in a similar vein to Texas Motor Speedway, circa 2021, the 1.5-mile track just outside Dallas that in 2019 saw NASCAR apply a traction compound called PJ1 to help NASCAR Cup cars find grip to allow for multiple lanes of racing not long after the track had undergone a wholesale reprofiling. The compound made areas it had been applied, largely the outer lane or two in the corners, feel as if a driver was trundling along on black ice, and its lingering presence made for single-lane processional races in both 2020 and 2021.
But by 2022, things began to shift and, in 2023, IndyCar produced maybe its best non-500 oval race in a decade. Though TMS, of course, is no longer on IndyCar's schedule, finding the lowly attended IndyCar oval race replaced with a soon-to-debut street race next year in Arlington, the message of preaching patience is not lost on some in the paddock who still believe Iowa Speedway can be what it once was and that Saturday and Sunday are bound to offer better wheel-to-wheel action.
'You could have iRacing work on it in the offseason for the (tire) grip levels and the downforce (package) if they could get the right aero data from IndyCar and power levels and all that stuff,' Power said. 'If you really wanted to get it right, you'd start playing around with that stuff.'
Such a willingness and dedication to the show was pursued, admittedly almost to the paddock's detriment, a year ago, when after IndyCar's lackluster Race 1, series officials addressed team leaders — everyone utterly puzzled on what to do next. Though some question the extremes to which IndyCar has made last-minute changes to the downforce package and tires on race week for this year's Iowa weekend, series officials briefly brainstormed a year ago as to how to productively change the package overnight in hopes of not delivering a second dud in 24 hours.
That same dedication returns to Iowa Speedway this year, having had 12 months to dream up a solution. How much of one it may be, though, is anyone's guess.
'I'm kinda sad, man,' said six-time IndyCar champ Scott Dixon this week on Conor Daly's "Speed Street" podcast. 'I used to love that race. It was so fun. You could feel like a complete idiot, and you'd come put new tires on, and then you'd feel like King Kong.
'It was so much fun passing five cars a lap.'