Iowa Corn 300 Preview

Ryan Hunter-Reay and his Andretti Autosport teammates are looking for return to success at Iowa Speedway this weekend.  [Photo by: Shawn Gritzmacher]

Michael Andretti and his Andretti Autosport team are looking forward to the Verizon IndyCar Series moving west this Saturday from Milwaukee to the Iowa Speedway; a track that has been more than friendly to the AA team over recent years.

The 0.894-mile banked oval, designed by NASCAR driver Rusty Wallace, has hosted nine Indy car races since opening in 2006, and Andretti’s team has won six of those including the last five races in a row. Current drivers Ryan Hunter-Reay (2012, 2014), Tony Kanaan 2010 and Marco Andretti 2011 have visited victory lane along with Dario Franchitti 2007 and James Hinchcliffe 2013.

Saturday’s Iowa Corn 300 will be the final event in a three-race stretch of oval track racing which has seen Graham Rahal (Fontana) and Sebastien Bourdais (Milwaukee) win for teams not named Penske, Ganassi or Andretti. Other oval track winners this year include Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Dixon.

Rahal, who won a controversial race on the two-mile Fontana oval and hustled to a third-place at Milwaukee, is looking forward to trying his Honda-powered machine on the tight, but ultra-fast Iowa circuit.

“This has been the most successful year of my career,” explained Rahal, “and I think Iowa has been our strength the last couple of years. It’s going to be hard to catch Montoya to win the championship,” continued Rahal who has jumped to third-place in the standings, 69-points behind JPM. “That’s our goal this weekend in Iowa, to make sure we keep putting the team up front and try to give ourselves the best chance to win the championship.”

Target Chip Ganassi Chevrolet driver Scott Dixon lies between Montoya and Rahal in the points chase and thinks the unique track, where he’s qualified well, hasn’t always been kind to him in the past.

“Iowa is such a little bullring, it’s so fast. The G-loadings that you’re getting and how quick they get the cars to perform (under 18-second laps) around the track is spectacular. I’ve been on the pole twice there and I’ve never been on the podium,” the three-time series champion said.”

Last year’s Iowa race saw Kanaan lead 247 of 300 laps, but a late-race stop for tires by Hunter-Reay allowed him to pass TK with two laps remaining and go on for the win. RHR made-up 10 spots in the final eight laps.

Several drivers struggled last week on the equally tight Milwaukee Mile including Will Power and Ryan Briscoe who collected the turn four wall on lap 130 and Hunter-Reay who finished thirteenth.

The tight Iowa oval usually brings out a flurry of caution flags and could bring a shakeup in the points behind the leader Montoya.

CORN KERNELS:

• The Iowa race changed from 250 laps to 300 in 2014. The race covers 268.2 miles and the fastest qualifying lap on the shortest track that IndyCar visits is 186.809 mph posted last year by Castroneves.
• Iowa Speedway is banked 10-12-degrees in the turns.
• Thirty-eight drivers have scored points during the first 12 events this season.
• At Milwaukee last week Castroneves gained 22 spots in the race after starting 24^th.
  Not to be outdone, Rahal gained 11 places, going from 14^th to 3^rd in the final 25 laps.
• The same 24 drivers who raced at Milwaukee will appear at Iowa.
• Bourdais’ average running spot during the 250 laps at Milwaukee was 3.25.
• Last Sunday’s Milwaukee race was the most watched IndyCar race on NBC Sports Network (532,000 viewers) since the Baltimore street race in 2011.
• TV: Saturday Qualifying (same-day tape delay), 6:30 p.m. (ET) / Race (Live), 8:00p.m. (ET).
  Radio: Sirius 212/ XM 209. Also, indycarradio.com for both qualifying and race.

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

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