Iowa Corn 300 Preview

Fans watch all the excitement of the 2015 Iowa Corn 300 at Iowa Speedway. [Photo by: Shawn Gritzmacher]

A tight track, a dominant team and an unusual starting time welcome the Verizon Indy Car Series to Iowa Speedway and the Iowa Corn 300 on July 9-10.

Built in 2005 and opened for racing in 2006, the $70 million, 7/8-mile Rusty Wallace-designed banked oval features tight corners and constant traffic with race laps that often average over 175 mph. The IRL/ Indy Car Series ran its first event there in 2007 before a large and enthusiastic crowd.

The original owners and builders of the track, the Manatt family, sold the facility to the Clements, owners of Featherlite Trailers and Coaches, in 2011, but financial issues saw the track change hands once more; this time to a subsidiary of NASCAR in 2013. Rumors of a Sprint Cup race coming to the track someday abound, but many feel that several upgrades would be needed before that occurs.

This will be the tenth Indy Car Series race at Iowa Speedway, with Ryan Hunter-Reay having captured three of the last four (2012, ’14 and ’15) for Andretti Autosport. As a team, AA has won seven while Chip Ganassi Racing has won the other two and Team Penske has so far been shutout.

The 300-lapper (268.2 miles) is Race 10 of 16 on the 2016 calendar and the third of five oval events. Previous oval-track winners have been Scott Dixon (Phoenix) and Alexander Rossi (Indy 500). Texas will be completed later in the season after being postponed by rain and Pocono will be run on August 21.

With high speeds and tight quarters on this less-than-one-mile track, frequent caution periods often play a part in race strategy and outcomes. The 2014 race produced seven caution flags while the 2015 chase was slowed for a record 73 laps. Hunter-Reay’s 2014 win saw him lead the final two laps after pitting for fresh tires on the final caution and pass leader Tony Kanaan for the win.

Simon Pagenaud has three road/street course wins this season for Penske and Will Power has two (Detroit #2 and Road America), also for The Captain. Other r/s course winners so far have been Juan Pablo Montoya (St. Petersburg) and Sebastien Bourdais (Detroit #1).

Penske’s team has dominated the series this season, having won six races under Chevrolet power. They hold the first three spots in the points chase (Pagenaud-375, Castroneves-301 and Power-294), but have yet to win in Newton. Look for Team Penske to change its luck and finally come home an Iowa winner.

CORN KERNELS:
• No Iowa pole-winners have gone on to win a race there.
• James Hinchcliffe, Marco Andretti and Tony Kanaan are other Andretti Autosport drivers who have won in Iowa.
• Four current Indy car drivers (Andretti, Dixon, Castroneves and Kanaan) have competed in all nine previous Iowa events.
• Josef New garden, still recovering from injuries suffered at Texas, has finished second at Iowa in each of the last two races.
• It has been reported by “Racer” that the 2017 Indy Car Series could return to two or three tracks that it has raced on in past years.
• The Iowa entry list includes rookies Max Chilton, Conor Daly and Alexander Rossi among the usual 22-car field. Seven drivers who competed here in 2015 aren’t among this year’s entries.
• The two-lap qualifying record at Iowa is held by Scott Dixon at a very rapid 186.256 mph.
• The first four finishers (Hunter-Reay, Newgarden, Karam and Rahal) in the 2015 Iowa Corn 300 were all American drivers.
• TV: NBCSN, Qualifying-Saturday, 3 p.m. ET/ Race-Sunday, 5p.m. ET. Reportedly, the race is starting this late on a Sunday afternoon due to TV requirements.

QUOTES:
Scott Dixon, Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet: “It is such a tough track for racing. You have very high g-force loading and there is always a lot of action on that little bullring-style track. You really have to be on your game with traffic and the quick lap times. It’s got a lot more character having weathered over the past few years and the bumps in Turns 1 and 2. The grip has come down a little bit as well.”

James Hinchcliffe, Arrow Schmidt Peterson Honda: “It’s a fun little track and one of the toughest we do all year, not just physically, but also because you are always racing someone. There are two great lanes that make for some awesome wheel- to–wheel action.”

Graham Rahal, RLL Honda: “As a team we’ve been pretty good at Iowa the past couple years. It’s been one of our strong points and we just had a good test there. Honda has worked very hard on their engine and aerodynamic package to get a more efficient car at this downforce level. So we should be pretty good.”

Sebastien Bourdais, Hydroxycut KVSH Chevrolet: “They did a pretty nice job in Turns 1 and 2 shaving some of the bumps, but they are still popping up and now there are bumps in Turns 3 and 4 where they had to patch the surface, so the grip is pretty uneven.”

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

Related Posts

• 
  Sebring 2024
• 
  Giuseppe Victorious
• 
  Car or Driver