There isn’t any one issue that led to IndyCar seeing 100 (Race 1) and 95 (Race 2) passes for position during this weekend’s doubleheader at Iowa Speedway, after the four races the two previous years averaged 333. It wasn’t just the partially repaved, NASCAR-owned track, and it wasn’t solely the fault of the weighty hybrid either. It wasn’t the downforce levels, or Firestone’s tire compound or the blistering temps.

All those things played a factor. Three of them aren’t going away — the track surface, extra hybrid weight and heat that pushed past 90 degrees both days. The latter two are in control of IndyCar and its partners, but they can only do so much to outweigh the rest.

Whether the 2025 edition can be markedly better is far too early to tell, but there’s no sugarcoating one of the most entertaining weekends on the calendar – one billed to be IndyCar at its best, with heavy partner support, hours of high-level off-track entertainment and wheel-to-wheel, high-speed, action-packed oval racing — dropped the proverbial ball on its most central element.

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There would be no weekend without the racing, and the goal, after all, is to convert even just a few of the Post Malone, Kelsea Ballerini, Eric Church and Luke Combs fans into casual race fans curious enough to purposefully flip on the TV to NBC the next Sunday afternoon.

And unless you’re a fan of high-speed parades that occasionally feature massive crashes, it’s unlikely the Hy-Vee-sponsored doubleheader weekend did it for you — important as ever, now with NASCAR bringing the Cup series to town, selling out in days and putting on a rip-roaring race just a month prior.

Ticket sales may have been up — admittedly always a tough subject to put into perspective, when the promoter in recent years has admitted to giving away thousands of tickets per day when pressed — and so financially, Year 3 of this major weekend on IndyCar’s calendar may have been a smashing success. With competition looming — competition owned and operated by the same folks who own the track — change must be swift if success should continue into this next multi-year deal.

“It was a bit of a boring race for everybody — drivers, media. It’s the most boring thing I’ve ever done, and it was yesterday as well,” championship leader Alex Palou said Sunday after his runner-up finish. “It’s a shame that we couldn’t put on a better show.

“We’ve seen other series here run well, and we cannot compare. It’s like putting a Moto GP race on dirt. It’s a cool track, but you cannot put it on the same and expect a very nice race. It was a shame, because it used to be a really cool race for the fans with tons of overtaking and tons of tire deg and things to do. I don’t know. I don’t have the answers.”

Why NASCAR partially repaved Iowa Speedway

The suspicions had been looming for months when the photos first surfaced.

In May, NASCAR held a tire test one month ahead of the Cup series’ first visit to the track. After opening its doors in 2006 and being purchased by the sanctioning body in 2013, Iowa Speedway’s maiden top-level NASCAR weekend had been ever bit of two decades in the making. And it was in the days after that test the motorsports world at-large first laid eyes on scant shots of the new jet-black splotches of freshly-laid asphalt in the lower lanes of the corners — notably, not the entire track.

Due to the narrow window of ideal weather conditions during which track officials could carry out the multi-step process, Iowa Speedway was resurfaced for the first time since it opened just in the corners — seen to be the most important places to add grip to aid in Cup cars putting on a solid debut show. Though the June race weekend came with early tire failures, not to mention the surface just looked plain odd and spawned obvious questions, the Cup series came away having put on one of its best short-track shows in quite some time.

For better or worse, the track owner’s goals had been met. Unlike Texas Motor Speedway — which underwent a massive sea change nearly a decade ago and ruined not only its NASCAR show, but IndyCar’s race-ability too (up until 2023, at least) — these changes, made without IndyCar in mind, would be seen by track decisionmakers as a rousing success.

IndyCar would simply need to deal with it.

Deal with it — at least well — they did not.

Drivers entered Iowa doubleheader with mixed concerns

Last month’s test that came in the wake of NASCAR’s race weekend was surprising in many ways — not all of them good. Speeds flirted with 190 mph as the series tested a tire compound from Firestone that proved to be far too durable to offer any level of meaningful degradation.

Balancing the grippy-ness of the newly-repaved track and a heavier car, the series opted to dial back downforce for race weekend to prevent cars from carrying so much speed into the corners and limit the steering loads and G forces on the drivers. In concert, Firestone produced a new softer right-side tire compound that was supposed to degrade quicker.

Entering the weekend, much of the attention revolved around whether the 27-car field would be able to run two-abreast for the bulk of the race, as had been the case in years past, allowing for rampant passing and edge-of-your-seat action through the field, even as Josef Newgarden typically dominated. Though IndyCar had struggled for the better part of four years to put in a second lane at Texas after Cup put a traction compound down to help give them a second lane after the track’s repave — one that made doing anything other than hugging the bottom lane like driving on an ice rink in 2020 and 2021 — there remained hope Thursday and early Friday IndyCar could still salvage the show with the use of a 30-minute initial practice meant for solely running in the upper groove and pressing used rubber into the nooks and crannies of the surface.

“If we get a good high line in, I think we’re going to put on one heck of a show. Saturday night races at Iowa have always been one of the greatest races you’d ever see,” RLL veteran driver Graham Rahal said race week, noting how much the new surface had changed on the low line after IndyCar’s test day.

Others, though, were skeptical.

“I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a lot less overtaking. This place has been known to have overtaking left, right and center, but unfortunately, I don’t see that happening this year,” Andretti Global driver Marcus Ericsson said Friday ahead of practice. “The test was just a one-lane track, and that was a bit concerning. Hopefully, the tires we changed to degrade a bit more, because that’s always been the case here. When you have 2-3 seconds of drop-off, that creates really interesting dynamics in the races.

“I love running here at Iowa. I think it’s one of the best on the calendar.”

Why having a second lane matters for IndyCar at Iowa

The idea of a second lane and why it opens up, or doesn’t, in IndyCar can oftentimes be tough to put a finger on. As several drivers explained over the weekend, it comes down to a couple factors: drivers’ willingness to run up high early and often, and whether that running actually embeds meaningful levels of rubber into the racing surface.

The low line will always be shorter-and therefore quicker — but at an older, warn-down track, grip levels both low and high tend to level out over time, as the advantage of running down low wanes. Once the repaved grippy-ness wears away from use over a few years, and as drivers occasionally drift up high to make passes, both lanes begin to run similarly, and running higher can be more of an advantage in the right circumstances — or at least not as much of a detriment.

During the first year or two after a repave, grip levels are so high even a fraction shorter line around a track can be quite advantageous — leading to drivers exclusively running the lowest, shortest line, and hence that rubbering in. As they do so, their tires wear away and leave small marbles of dust and rubber off-line — making that higher line slippery to run on. As long as both lanes are used, both can continue to be, but the moment a high line is abandoned, a vicious cycle takes off until it can be slowly reversed.

To everyone’s happiness, Friday’s high line practice that proceeded a traditional 90-minute session didn’t lead to a single crash and had drivers finishing running meaningfully high speeds. The problem: in a weekend that offered just 90 minutes of normal practice for nearly four hours of racing, teams weren’t about to waste time running a lane in practice they weren’t certain they’d often use in race conditions. Engineers and drivers had plenty to dissect between the new tire compound and downforce levels, and how they jointly reacted to the repaved surface under both race-running and qualifying conditions.

And so, unsurprisingly, after the weekend’s lone practice where drivers and teams had to be inherently selfish — running in ways that would benefit them in the short-term, but would make race conditions for all tough in the long-run — drivers came away Friday night largely resigned to a frustrating few more days at the track.

“From the first few races we had here, you just followed the white line, and it was a pack race. It was kinda chaotic for a short track, but we went through a good period for the last 10 years where it’s multi-lane, high-deg and one of the best short-track races we had,” six-time champ Scott Dixon said Friday. “(The repave) has taken away a lot of the race-ability we had.

“Maybe it’s better for other categories, but I miss last year’s track. I think drivers referred to it as having ‘character.’ It had a lot of character. It had a lot of bumps, and it was definitely hard work. Qualifying was very tough, but obviously, you had the use of two, three, four lanes in the race — especially on starts and restarts. I hope it gets back to that.”

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Added oval veteran Ed Carpenter Saturday afternoon after his qualifying run: “It can be two lanes on the start, but it goes away so fast that we’re unfortunately going to have to wait for the track to age in and get the Iowa of old back. The new pavement, especially with what we’re dealing with now with the weight of the hybrid, it just makes it a challenge.

“Hopefully people stick with us for what may be an unentertaining year or two here. I’m sure this will quickly become a better race again.”

'They ruined a fantastic race'

Despite IndyCar and Firestone’s best efforts, drivers also correctly forecasted ahead of the race changes to the tires and downforce levels hadn’t had nearly the effect decisionmakers would’ve wished. After a year where Newgarden made four stops both races en route to his weekend sweep of the twin 250-lap races, two stops was all anyone running in-sequence needed across what proved to be two races fairly low on cautions.

Tires lasted as long as anyone wanted them to, making the processional affairs as poor viewing experiences as anyone might’ve predicted. Though Newgarden and short-track aficionado Santino Ferrucci managed to gobble up spots on each start and restart while swinging around the outside on rivals — Newgarden jumped from 22^nd to 14^th in the first two laps of Saturday’s race — the field stayed largely stagnant.

Through the first 90 laps Sunday, drivers running 1^st through 8^th were in the exact same spots they’d started the race, with none having even swapped back once.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t bummed about the race and how it raced,” said Pato O’Ward after his runner-up finish Saturday. “It’s really tough to get that second lane working. It was a bit frustrating, just because I thought we had a very strong car — definitely a car that was capable of winning, but there was just no way to get around a car.

“I don’t know who decided to do the change, but they ruined a fantastic race. You can’t fight. It reminds me of Texas 2020. Once you’re done with that first lap after a restart, you can’t go anywhere. Once you get momentum going, it’s just accepting the wall basically — or really crapping your pants. I wouldn’t say it’s the hybrid. I would just say this race tire we’re racing this weekend is quite temperature sensitive.”

Carpenter disagreed, citing the added weight from the hybrid as an outsized factor in the poor racing — and one he views as largely self-inflicted. Additionally, the series’ lone driver-owner cited a lack of emphasis on tire testing with such a large change of the car for the massive change in the quality of the on-track product.

“I think (Firestone) made good adjustments from the test until now. You can only ask a tire to do so much. This race will improve as the surface degrades again, but with the weight of the cars now, it’s just so hard to follow, and I think that’s what you’re going to see in subsequent (oval) events. It’s very hard to follow, and when you can’t follow closer, you’re not able to get a run to make passes. It’s a challenge and something we’re going to have to figure out as a sport, because we’re got too good of a product to take a decisive step back in our product by something of our own doing.”

Where IndyCar goes from here

With just under 12 months to plan until IndyCar’s return, there remain some pockets of hope, but resurrecting IndyCar’s form at Iowa isn’t likely to be a flick of a switch. There’s talk around the paddock Iowa Speedway may undergo an entire track repave between now and then, bringing all the lanes of the 7/8-mile short oval onto the same surface timeline.

Whether that would mean again repaving the lower sections of the corners that were already done early this year is unclear. Doing so, though, would seemingly take the track back to square one and mean erasing any wearing down of the surface that took place in June and July. Without a drastically-different tire and downforce package — only realistically achievable after multiple rounds of testing — IndyCar could very well show up to a grippy surface where the low line is preferred and the high one works initially, but is soon forgotten.

Even still, Saturday race-winner Scott McLaughlin said Sunday the series needs to do a deeper dive to be able to be more nimble when IndyCar comes to repaved tracks.

“You can’t just blame the track, because at the end of the day, they have to repave this at some time,” he said. “That’s just how it is, and if we can somehow get our cars working when a repave happens and know what we need to do to make it work, we won’t run into these issues.

“I feel like we go into it and don’t do the right amount of studying to get it done and get it to work. That’s not a shot at the sport or anything. It’s about working together with the amazing people we have up and down pitlane. It’s just a matter of making it work.”

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If the work that was done last weekend can be preserved, then slowly over time, Firestone rubber can be worked into the track’s surface as the billiard-table-smooth surface is ground down. As both top and bottom lanes become slicker and the latter can be used more frequently, there’s plenty of history to point to to know ‘old Iowa’ can again be recovered. But as we saw with Texas from 2020-23, it can sometimes take four visits before side-by-side racing returns.

By then, IndyCar may just have developed a new secret of its own: a drastically lighter new car.

“I just wonder if we’re too heavy, and then when we added downforce, it overloads the tire. That’s sort of the predicament. I feel like if we were 200 pounds lighter, you could run more downforce and run a softer tire. I think that should be — and probably is — a big focus of the new car coming in a couple years is to knock off a lot of weight,” Sunday race-winner Will Power said. “And even with this package, maybe a softer tire might just work with this downforce level, and if it degrades, people will go out, and you can roll on the outside.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but we certainly have got to do something for next year. We went from the best oval race we would have all season to the least amount of passing.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: 'A boring race.' IndyCar has 12 months to fix Iowa on-track product.