This is why Iowa Speedway got a full nearly one-hour NASCAR Cup Series practice session on Friday.
For one, this is the first time the Cup Series has ever competed at the .875-mile oval but the track has also underwent a fresh repave but only in the corners.
It seemingly challenged teams and their set-ups as numerous teams experienced tire failures and incidents resulting from them throughout the session.
At the 15-minute mark, Ty Gibbs was forced to pull off the track with a flat right front but was also to keep his No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE off the Turn 3 wall.
“There wasn’t any telling that was going to happen.,” Gibbs said. “We made some setup adjustments that will probably help that out, but don’t know anything about it until it went down.”
Shortly after the Gibbs issue, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Christopher Bell also suffered a right front flat but was not able to stay off the Turns 3 and 4 SAFER Barrier.
“Just lost the tire, man. Lost the tire,” Bell said afterwards.
What did he otherwise learn?
“It’s about what we expected. Lots of grip on the bottom, and that’s what we expected.”
The damage necessitated a backup car, meaning that Bell will have to start at the rear of the field on Sunday night, no matter what happens in qualifying on Saturday.
Then came a flat left rear for Ross Chastain at the 30 minute mark and because it left his Trackhouse Racing No. 1 beached, it took 13 minutes and a double tow truck to get the incident clear of the track. NASCAR added 15 minutes to the session as a result.
Austin Cindric also lost a right front and got into the Turn 2 wall and will also have to go to a back-up.
So what now?
Ultimately, this is why NASCAR scheduled the one -hour practice session to begin with, to allow teams to figure out how hard to push the set-up in advance of the race on Sunday night.
Initially, tires could not seemingly go 20 laps without someone suffering a failure but teams generally study the data and will find ways to make it last an entire fuel run. Look no further to the first half of the race at Bristol and then the second half once teams had time to digest their information.
Still, the lack of longevity surprised Denny Hamlin, especially since this is the same compound from the test.
“Yeah, even in the test, they had high wear, but they ran 50-some laps on the tires before they really had high wear,” Hamlin said. “Surprising to see they had as high wear as they did with just 20 laps or so on tires. But I think that’ll get better in the race, but if there’s havoc with tires and wear, I like our chances.”
Kyle Larson was one of the three drivers that tested there last month alongside Bell and Brad Keselowski.
He didn’t anticipate this.
“I don’t know why we’re blowing so many tires,” Larson said. “I haven’t had time to talk to the team and I don’t think they’ve had time to digest or study the tires either. I’m not really sure.”
Tyler Reddick was surprised too.
“I think it’s a little warmer today but at Bristol for example, it was too cool I think,” Reddick said. “I don’t know, typically, you can kind of see where the track was starting to wear in too from like the start of practice to the end, it was starting to lighten up a little bit.
“Fresh asphalt, almost pitch black, but was starting to grip where we were running. I don’t know if it’s already kind of, not sure if I walked out there right now, if it’s starting to knock the top off a little bit. Not totally sure, but I think you guys saw it, the grip was getting better and better.”
For what it’s worth, Larson and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates did not have such issues.
“No, none of us did,” he said.
Chase Elliott echoed those sentiments.
“We just got done running so I’ll be curious to dive in and see what we can do with pressure locations, if the issues today were manufacturer set-up related or whatnot,” Elliott said.
Larson says the ‘unknown of things on Sunday will make it fun and exciting.’
Elliott agree there too.
“It’s going to be super interesting because off 2 and 4, it’s rougher on the old pavement, so anytime you shock the tires going over the dips and bumps, it’s just hard on them,” Elliott said. “So I think we’re going to try to stay on that new strip as long as we can because it’s easier on the tires but it’s also the fastest way around the track too.
“At the same time, these cars get miserably tight when you drive behind someone so something is going to have to give there when you try to set up a pass.”
Who was fast?
Noah Gragson was fastest in the session over Ty Gibbs, Alex Bowman, Justin Haley and Chase Elliott but those speeds were all clocked on mock qualifying runs.
“With it being a new repave it definitely created some challenges and a guessing game coming into this race, but I felt good on the Ford Performance simulator and it felt really close to how we unloaded in real life,” Gragson said. “We were just a little loose and got better throughout the practice. I started pretty loose in, but once we got that under control it felt like the car had a lot of speed and then came into the garage. Obviously, it does have a lot of pace, so I’m really excited to see what we can do with it here for qualifying. There’s still a long way to go this weekend, but the car feels pretty good and everybody on this Bass Pro/Winchester team has been working hard. We’ve kind of been in a slump the last four or five weeks since Darlington, but we’ve got a really fast race car and continue to work well with each other and it’s a good place for us to try and turn it around.”
The fastest 10 consecutive lap averages were posted by Reddick, Chastain, Bowman, Larson and Hamlin.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.