Iowa Speedway will look different when NASCAR finally gets on the race track this weekend. NASCAR decided to repave Iowa but didn’t have enough time for a full process. Therefore, the bottom and middle lanes were partially repaved while the top lane remained untouched. This will essentially make the top lane unusable, ruining the previous version of Iowa.
[autotag]Christopher Bell[/autotag], who competed in the NextGen tire test at Iowa in May, talked about the repave and didn’t give a glowing review. Bell has a lot of experience at Iowa in the Xfinity Series, so he knows what it used to race like before the repave.
“I mean, it just completely ruined the corners, and it’s gonna make it a one-groove race track,” Bell said. “They’ve been telling us that for a year, ever since they announced that Iowa was gonna be on the Cup schedule. NASCAR was informing us that they were gonna do, they told us patch jobs. Then, repaving the bottom half of the corners is gonna make it where the top half is completely unusable.”
Meanwhile, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, Kevin Harvick, and many others were also confused about the repave. Harvick called it “one of the biggest F-ups in the whole year.” It is great that NASCAR is returning to Iowa, but the expectations shouldn’t be set to previous races at the venue. The partial repave will surely make the top lane a wasteland, but hopefully, there will still be passing this weekend.
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