It’s not a definitive confirmation but partway through the inaugural Iowa Corn 350, there was a message over the closed-circuit video board for fans to lock in their tickets for a 2025 return.
Should NASCAR decide to return with the Cup Series next season, it would do so feeling really confident about the racing that took place in front of full grandstands over both a Saturday and Sunday doubleheader that included the Xfinity Series.
The biggest topic of conversation centered around the partially repaved surface and whether NASCAR should finish the job before a theoretical return trip. On one hand, extending the new pavement would widen the race track out even more, providing more lanes for drivers to find clean air. On the other, having just the lower half kept racers fighting for position and created hard racing.
Those are the things NASCAR vice president of competition Elton Sawyer says his office would have to weigh.
“We had great racing,” Sawyer said Tuesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “We had side by side (racing). We had two lanes. So, I’m sure we’ll have a lot of dialogue around if we go back do you repave the whole facility? Do you just repave that third lane up by the wall? A lot of questions to answer on that.
“But I think the No. 1 thing is we had really, really good racing this past weekend. No matter what we do, we need to make sure we’re heading in a positive direction to make the racing better or to leave it as is and have another data point after next year.”
The race was especially a considerable success when compared to the expectations entering the weekend. Drivers, both current and retired, expressed skepticism that repaving any of the old surface from 2006 would hurt the racing. Then came practice on Friday, which produced several tire failures and crashes that sent cars into the wall.
The race objectively exceeded expectations.
“We went into the weekend with a lot of unknowns,” Sawyer said. “As I said last week, our goal going into Iowa when we announced it last October, was not to repave. We wanted to get that first race on that old pavement and kind of get a data point, but that just wasn’t the case. Some areas needed some attention and we did that, and we have what we had there this past weekend.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.