In a little more than a month the Iowa Speedway will host the first of five racing weekends and it will be capped off on June eighth by the Dupont Pioneer 250, the first of two NASCAR Nationwide series events this season. Spokesman Craig Armstrong says Iowa Speedway officials requested the race be move from May to June for this season.
“It really was all about the graduation weekend that we were inadvertently on in May of previous years,” Armstrong explains. He says fans were torn because there were lots of graduation events to attend, so they asked NASCAR to move the event to June to avoid conflicts.
The Indy car series returns for the seventh straight year with the running of the Iowa Corn Indy 250 on June 23rd. “This year in order to make it much more interesting to qualify with the three heat races format that they did last year, they increased the laps of each heat race from 30 to 50, and now they are paying points as well as money. So it does count toward the championship to be in those heat races,”Armstrong explains.
He says the races are fun to watch and says “It’s kind of like watching bees fly around a Ball jar.” The season begins later and will end earlier this year. The final race, a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race is on September eighth.
Armstrong says the reason for that is the Iowa-Iowa State football game is the weekend after they finish up and they do not want to compete with that game. The Nationwide Series will return on August third with the U.S. Cellular 250.