Top 5: NASCAR’s Iowa visit shines, Martin Truex Jr. bows out, tire talk

NEWTON, Iowa — Five thoughts after NASCAR’s inaugural Cup Series weekend at Iowa Speedway …

1. Taking Stock

The enthusiasm was obvious from the start.

When Joey Logano first visited Iowa Speedway as a 16-year-old racing in the Pro Cup Series, he was wowed by a packed grandstand. Eighteen years later, Logano said the passion from Iowans hadn’t changed a bit when NASCAR showed up for its inaugural Cup Series race.

“They love it,” he said. “I don’t know where everyone is coming from, because I just see a lot of cornfields around here. It’s kind of like the ‘Field of Dreams.’”

Cliche, maybe, but it certainly fits Iowa. Upon driving through the tunnel under Turns 1 and 2, visitors are greeted with a sign that says “Infield of Dreams.” If you build it, they will come? Indeed. Rusty Wallace and his partners built the track, and the NASCAR Cup Series arrived after a nearly two-decade wait.

And when the circus finally rolled into town, the excitement arrived with it.

“I’d never been out here before, and when I turned off the interstate, I could see the racetrack,” said Rodney Childers, Josh Berry’s crew chief. “I told my guys in the van: ‘This place is freaking awesome.’ We came through the tunnel and I was like, ‘Holy s—. Why have we not been racing at this joint? We should have been here a long time ago.’”

No, Sunday night’s race wasn’t on the same Iowa surface fans and drivers fell in love with over the years. It sat and waited so long for its moment in the spotlight, the place required a strange-looking re-do before cars could get on the track.

“It’s still Iowa,” Chase Briscoe said, “but it’s not near as fun as the old Iowa.”

Regardless, you could tell NASCAR was wanted. The local fans made it very obvious how thrilled they were to have such a big event in their state. They treated it as an honor, and they were proud.

“Thank you for coming to Iowa!” one fan said to a pair of reporters on Friday, shortly after the Cup garage opened for the first time.

The type of passion Iowans showed is not the same reception NASCAR gets in every market. Sometimes it feels like an afterthought, as if people don’t even know — or care — the race is in town. So when the grandstands are full (even if they only seat 25,000 people), it seems like an experiment worth continuing for NASCAR.

“If the fans show up, we should be there,” Logano said. “If the fans don’t show up, we should probably go to a different racetrack. It’s just that simple.”

Two or three years from now, he said, would be the telltale sign for that. After all, no inaugural race in the last few decades has been a dud in terms of the fresh feel and influx of enthusiasm; whether it lasts remains to be seen.

But this pocket of the Midwest, with the “Sprint Car Capital of the World” in Knoxville Raceway nearby, seems to have a pretty good chance of continuing to shine.

“The fan base here is very loyal to motorsports,” said race winner Ryan Blaney, who has spent many Christmases in the area thanks to nearby family. “I know they were really upset when Xfinity and Trucks went away from here. People love motorsports out here in this area of the country and they deserve to have a big race.”

2. Fastest Car Tracker

During this column’s brief hiatus, Fast Cars won three of the last four races to move into a tie with Other Cars. But Other Cars struck back in a big way on Sunday night after Kyle Larson was taken out of the race despite what crew chief Cliff Daniels had radioed was “the fastest car in the field by a ridiculous amount.”

Larson’s team at one point thought he might have a tire going flat and called him into the pits from the lead. Then he drove from 32nd all the way into the top five without the help of any cautions.

Ultimately, Larson got wrecked by Daniel Suárez while trying to make a three-wide move — a move he said could have been done with more patience, in hindsight — but Larson was still the fastest car regardless of a 34th-place finish.

“Obviously if I don’t go three-wide, there’s probably no crash,” Larson said. “I’m probably running sixth into Turn 1. But either way, sixth is better than crashed.

“I should have been more aware of who I was around. Suárez is really aggressive, and he was probably just pushing and got loose underneath me.”

Fastest Car Score: Other Cars 10, Fastest Cars 9.

Fastest Cars by Driver: Larson 3, Denny Hamlin 3, Christopher Bell 3, Tyler Reddick 2, William Byron 2, Joey Logano 2, Michael McDowell 1, Martin Truex Jr. 1, Todd Gilliland 1, Ty Gibbs 1.

With Martin Truex Jr. retiring, who might be next of the veteran guard to step away from full-time racing? (Sean Gardner / Getty Images)

3. Q&A

Each week in this space, we’ll pose one question and attempt to answer one from the past.

Q: Who will be next to retire?

After 44-year-old Martin Truex Jr.’s announcement he will retire from full-time racing at the end of this season, it’s quite jarring to look at the next four oldest Cup Series regulars.

That’s 43-year-old Denny Hamlin, 40-year-old Brad Keselowski, 39-year-old Michael McDowell and 39-year-old Kyle Busch.

Seriously? Didn’t they just start racing not all that long ago? Are we all really getting that old?

“It is weird, but that’s evolution of how this sport happens,” Busch said. “Jeff Gordon came in at 22 or 23 and left at 43, so I know my days are numbered.”

Thankfully, none of those four are immediately close to heading out the door. Each of them should be around for at least a couple more years, and all of them are still competitive (though Busch’s cars do not seem to match him). When they’re gone, though, Joey Logano (still somehow only 34 years old) will be the final link to a generation who battled with the likes of Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and Tony Stewart in their prime.

“There was such a big rookie class back in 2006,” Hamlin said of a group that included Truex, Clint Bowyer, Reed Sorenson, JJ Yeley and David Stremme. “Everyone is gone. I guess when you put it all in perspective and seeing these guys peel off — I certainly feel (his age physically), but my mind doesn’t make me believe I’m the oldest.”

Hamlin will likely be the next to go at some point in the next few years, just because his body won’t hold up. He’s been open about soreness and dealing with various injuries that leave it tough to get loose enough to tie his shoes some mornings.

But much of it depends on performance. As Keselowski put it, Mark Martin drove until he was in his 50s, so that’s another 10 years; but sometimes, he wonders if he can go that long.

“Inevitably, everything ends,” Keselowski said. “Fortunately as of late, there have been enough good days to where you go, ‘I’m gonna do this for a long time.’ I left the Coke 600 saying, ‘Oh, I’ve got 10 years left in me.’ And when I left North Wilkesboro, I was saying, ‘Oh my God, how am I gonna keep doing this?’

“So you’ve got the ups and the downs and you just try to level them out a little bit in your head.”

GO DEEPER

Gluck: Martin Truex Jr. craved respect during his NASCAR career, and he got it

A: Can the tires be better?

That was a question posed in this column around the same time last year, and it’s clearly still a topic today.

Last year, Goodyear’s Greg Stucker spoke of a New Hampshire tire test in which the manufacturer was coming up with a tire compound that was “significantly softer on both sides.”

“All the drivers at the test felt like it was a big gain and felt like it was definitely in the right direction,” he said then.

But when the race happened, and the tire was used in subsequent events, it didn’t quite get the desired result. For example: The winning call at New Hampshire last year was to take two tires on the final pit stop, and race winner Truex said he wished the tires would have worn out further.

“It was still hard to pass,” Truex said then. “You could still take two (as a strategy). Still probably could go softer. I know Goodyear hates when we talk about it like that, but I still think that would be better.”

Fast forward to Sunday night, after a year of discussion about softer and softer tires. Blaney won the race with left side tires that had more than 130 laps on them, and although they did wear, it certainly wasn’t enough to keep a two-tire call from being the right one.

Meanwhile, seven cars in the race had flat tires and five more had flats in Friday’s practice session. That illustrates just how difficult the window is to get the tires right, because the answer lies somewhere in between blowouts and the ability to have tires last for one-third of the entire race.

4. NASquirks

When a caution for Daniel Hemric came out in the middle of a pit cycle on Lap 182, a significant portion of the field had already made pit stops and were currently not on the lead lap. Normally, those cars who were trapped one lap down by the caution would just take the wavearound and return to the lead lap, albeit with lost track position.

But this time, a twist: Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s team decided to keep him on track, which meant no one could do a wavearound according to the rulebook. It was a conscious decision to try and keep Stenhouse’s competitors from being on the lead lap, even if it left Stenhouse restarting on 103-lap-old tires.

“We got trapped in a caution at Texas while running really well, and we just went back and looked at things and said, ‘Man, sometimes in this scenario, this may be the way to do it,’” Stenhouse crew chief Mike Kelley said. “You’ve got really good guys out here. So if you can take half of them out of the race for at least awhile, why wouldn’t you?”

Stenhouse ended up with his first top-five finish on a non-superspeedway paved track in more than two years (May 2022), even if Kelley wondered if the move “might not make everybody happy.” But Childers said the garage is OK with those type of strategy calls, because “everybody has got to run their own race.”

“They made that call and ended up with a good finish, so hats off to those guys,” Childers said. “In my career, 21 years, I’ve thought about doing that a lot. I don’t think I’ve done it but maybe twice, but sometimes you’ve got to do that. If you can lock half of them a lap down, that’s the best way to go.”

5. Five at No. 5

Our mini power rankings after Race No. 19/38 (including exhibitions):

1. Kyle Larson (last time: 1): Not much has changed in the month since our last power rankings. Larson’s team is still bringing excellent cars every week at all types of racetracks and he would be the points leader without his missed Charlotte race.

2. Chase Elliott (last time: 5): Elliott isn’t just leading the series in average finish — it’s not even close. His 9.1 average finish is 3.4 positions better than the next-best drivers (William Byron and Ross Chastain). To put that margin into perspective, the gap from Elliott to second-best is the same as second to 13th-best. He hasn’t led many laps, but he’s having a consistently good season.

3. Denny Hamlin (last time: 2): That was a bizarre race for the No. 11 team, which looked the worst it has all season — and this follows Hamlin blowing an engine after two laps at Sonoma. But you’d think it would just be a blip for a team that just came off five straight top-fives.

4. Christopher Bell (last time: not ranked): At the time of our last power rankings, Bell had fallen to 15th in the point standings and just wasn’t getting the results to be considered a title contender. Now he’s up to eighth in points after four straight top-10s, which include his rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 victory, and had a great car by the end of Sunday’s race.

5. Ryan Blaney (last time: not ranked): Blaney could have won two of the last three races (he ran out of fuel on the last lap at Gateway), and they both happen to be somewhat similar tracks to the championship race at Phoenix. He’ll have a lot of work to do to make the Championship 4 again, but you can’t count out a repeat at this point.

(Top photo of Ryan Blaney celebrating Sunday’s win: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)