NEWTON, IA – After a trip to the West Coast this past weekend at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to America’s Heartland for its inaugural race this Sunday at Iowa Speedway in Newton. While the track is new to the Cup Series, it is not new to NASCAR.
The .875-mile oval, located less than 40 miles east of Des Moines, hosted the NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series from 2009 through 2019, holding 33 races (20 Xfinity Series races and 13 Truck Series races).
“It’s my favorite pavement track that I’ve ever raced on,” said Chase Briscoe. “I’m super excited. It’s just an awesome racetrack. It’s rough and it’s worn out. They repaved some of it, which stinks, but nobody’s run there for a couple of years, and every time I’ve ever been there, it’s been an unbelievable race. You can just literally go wherever on the racetrack. I think it’ll be the perfect storm for our cars. I feel like the NextGen car really performs well on intermediates and kind of struggles on short tracks, but Iowa is like the intermediate of short tracks. And then you throw in the fact that it’s really slick and worn out. There should be tire wear. I’m just really, really excited to go there.”“It’s my favorite pavement track that I’ve ever raced on. I’m super excited. It’s just an awesome racetrack. It’s rough, and it’s worn out. They repaved some of it, which stinks, but nobody’s run there for a couple of years, and every time I’ve ever been there, it’s been an unbelievable race. You can just literally go wherever on the racetrack. I think it’ll be the perfect storm for our cars. I feel like the NextGen car really performs well on intermediates and struggles on short tracks, but Iowa is like the intermediate of short tracks. And then you throw in the fact that it’s really slick and worn out. There should be tire wear. I’m just really, really excited to go there.”
NASCAR has been absent from Iowa since 2020, with this year providing a welcome return to a track many in the industry have come to love. The D-shaped oval was designed by NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace, and its similarity to the .75-mile Richmond (Va.) Raceway is no coincidence. Wallace claimed Richmond as one of his favorite tracks, and when he joined Iowa’s design team in 2003, Wallace used Richmond as his baseline. Iowa features variable banking, with the turns banked between 12-14 degrees, the frontstretch at 10 degrees and the backstretch at 4 degrees. Construction of Iowa began on June 21, 2005, and the facility made its public debut on Sept. 15, 2006, with a Hooters Pro Cup Series race during which driver Woody Howard became the track’s first victor. ARCA Menards Series races followed in 2006, and the IndyCar Series joined Iowa’s lineup in 2007.
Chase Briscoe is a track veteran despite the NASCAR Cup Series having never run at Iowa Speedway. The driver of the No. 14 Mahindra USA 30 Years Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing has made five starts at Iowa across the NASCAR Xfinity Series (three), NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (one) and ARCA Menards Series (one). He has never finished outside the top-10 and has an average finish of 5.2, buoyed by two victories – July 9, 2016, in ARCA and July 27, 2019, in Xfinity.
“Iowa is the one track that from the get-go – I went there in ARCA and won, Truck Series, I ran second almost the whole race, and I should’ve won; the Xfinity car, I was always upfront, and I was able to win in it, too,” said Briscoe. “Honestly, as crazy as it sounds, on iRacing Iowa was always the one track that me and my buddies would all run because you could throw slide jobs, and before iRacing had dirt, that was the one track we felt like kind of raced like a dirt track because you’d slide around, and you could throw slide jobs on people. We would run so many laps around that racetrack between me and Christopher Bell and Logan Seavey and just all these guys you obviously hear of now. I had probably more laps around that track than any other on iRacing. When I finally got to go there in real life, I drove it just like I did on iRacing and it was fast. I need to get back on there and run some laps because it’s been a couple of years, now. It’s just a place that I fell in love with literally from the first lap I ran there, and I always enjoyed going there. It always helps when you run well every time you’ve been there, too. Yeah, I’m pretty jacked up about going there with the Cup car.”
Briscoe dominated in his 2016 ARCA Menards Series win at Iowa. The native of Mitchell, Indiana, qualified fifth and led twice for 63 laps. When Briscoe took the lead from Kyle Weatherman on lap 91, the 150-lap race was effectively over as Briscoe never relinquished the point, driving to a 2.484-second victory over runner-up Kyle Benjamin.
Racers will get a rare Friday practice session at Iowa.
“It’ll be nice to have a full practice session,” said Briscoe. “You can learn a lot. We only have a few a year, and those are the only times that we’re actually allowed to make changes on the car at the racetrack that are more than just your little, tiny adjustments. So as a team, you almost go there just trying to make your program better as a whole for down the road, so you can really try some stuff that you’re really wanting to try. And you might sacrifice a practice session at a new racetrack just trying to learn stuff for the rest of the year. It’s always nice when you have those long practice sessions. You can tune your car in and just try some stuff that you haven’t been able to try before.”
Briscoe’s second and most recent win at Iowa was more nuanced. Despite qualifying second for the 2019 Xfinity Series race, Briscoe didn’t take the lead until lap 244 of the 250-lap race. But those final seven laps were the only ones that mattered as Briscoe outran Christopher Bell, who had led four times for a race-high 234 laps, to take the victory by 1.069 seconds. It was the last Xfinity Series race at Iowa, and the top-five finishers – Briscoe, Bell, John Hunter Nemechek, Noah Gragson, and Tyler Reddick – are now all full-time NASCAR Cup Series drivers who will compete in Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 powered by Ethanol.
Mahindra Ag North America is a proud sponsor of Briscoe and Stewart-Haas, and the No. 14 Ford Mustang Dark Horse Briscoe will drive this weekend at Iowa highlights an impressive milestone for Mahindra – 30 years of selling tractors in the United States. Houston-based Mahindra Ag North America is part of Mahindra Group’s Automotive and Farm Sector, the world’s No. 1-selling farm tractor company, based on volumes across all company brands. Mahindra offers a range of tractor models from 20-75 horsepower, implements, and the ROXOR heavy-duty UTV. Mahindra farm equipment is engineered to be easy to operate by first-time tractors or side-by-side owners and heavy duty to tackle the tough jobs of rural living, farming, and ranching. Steel-framed Mahindra Tractors and side-by-sides are ideal for customers who demand performance, reliability, and comfort. Mahindra dealers are independent, family-owned businesses located throughout the U.S. and Canada.
