FIRST IMPRESSIONS: 2014 Iowa Corn Indy 300
First Impressions, IndyCar, IndyCar commentary — By More Front Wing Staff on July 13, 2014 2:15 pmThe 2014 Iowa Corn Indy 300 is in the books. Here are our first impressions of the event. Feel free to add your own in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
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PAUL’S IMPRESSIONS:
Look, I know that nobody actually listens to anything I say, but I have been beating this same drum for at least five years now — if the Verizon IndyCar Series race at Iowa Speedway isn’t on your bucket list, get it on there now!
Year after year, the shortest track in IndyCar produces the very best racing. I’ve now attended six of the eight IndyCar races held at the rural Iowa facility, and every year I think the racing somehow tops the year before. This year was no different.
Having been in the stands with my six-year old son (who, up substantially past his bedtime, lost it in a puddle of tears when his boy Will Power walled it late in the race), I have much to catch up on when I get home and watch the race on DVR. That said, the call for Ryan Hunter-Reay to pit late in the race was every bit as epic as the call at Baltimore in 2012 for him to say out on slick tires in the rain. RHR definitely didn’t have a car to win, but once again, Michael Andretti’s touch turned up gold.
Other brief tidbits: I have no idea how Montoya ended up back on the lead lap. Tony Kanaan was crazy fast and once again just ended up on the wrong end of strategy. Sebastian Saavedra was fun to watch until the clock struck midnight again. Ed Carpenter would do well to avoid the Penske guys for a few days.
One last thing: the crowd has declined somewhat over the years, but last night’s crowd was still quite healthy. It’s hard to gauge the crowd whilst within the crowd, but I’d guess the stands were around 80% full. That’s still pretty good for an IndyCar oval, especially given the dire forecast that was predicted all day long. The rain ended up holding off, and the evening actually turned out to be quite beautiful. The Iowa race fans are to be commended for coming out in droves and really lending great support to this race.
Finally (for real this time): huge kudos to the Iowa Corn Growers Association for their continued support of this race. Their members were everywhere last night. I would predict there were easily 4,000-5,000 members in blue shirts throughout the track. Every race title sponsor on the IndyCar calendar should come to Iowa and see how proper activation is done!
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STEPH’S IMPRESSIONS:
Before I get into trouble here, let me qualify the opinions I’m about to present: I was at Mosport all day yesterday and am there all day again today, and I had guests last night while the race was going on. In short, I was more distracted than usual when it was time to sit down for this one.
Still, it’s rare for an IndyCar race to have trouble holding my attention, and up until the few laps before the final yellow, this one just didn’t.
I love Iowa Speedway and the racing it produces. But the weather delay, while it’s fortunate it didn’t turn into a postponement, upset the rhythm of the event early and put the finish quite late into the night in Eastern time. And the poor attendance again this year — probably the worst IndyCar has seen at Iowa — is worrying and, frankly, makes it a bit difficult to feel invested. (Edited to add: there is no way the stands were 80% full, Paul. Sorry.)
It’s a crying shame because this was once one of IndyCar’s most successful and entertaining races, and the latter hasn’t changed. The racing was great last night when it was actually happening, and the surprise finish was an awesome thing to watch and made for a great demonstration of everything that’s great in the series at the moment.
So, why have the fans in Iowa stopped showing up? Are the new owners putting in less promotional effort? Has the date been messed with too much? Was a single-day admission cost of $60 for one race too much for the market? Or is this just part of an overall disturbing trend of IndyCar’s oval races falling into decline?
Time will undoubtedly tell, and it seems increasingly likely that the answers to these questions won’t be popular ones.
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BASH’S IMPRESSIONS:
This is more like it! Close quarters racing and a festival of pit stops made for an engaging race. The masterful work of the teams trying to beat each other out of their boxes was impressive. Once we got past the rain delay and early cautions, the battles and passes on the track were also great to watch.
Just past halfway, Ed Carpenter got himself right where he wanted to be — up front dicing with the likes of Kanaan, Briscoe, Power, Dixon and Helio. Lots of Chevy bowties were at the top of the leader board. This race has been pretty much owned over the years by the Andretti team, but their cars spent most of the race mid-pack, with Marco blowing up on the back stretch on lap 230. Most of the race, Penske and Ganassi only allowed Ed Carpenter to crash their party up front.
Tony Kanaan was stout all race and the battle with Dixon at the end was good to see. It’s well past time for the Ganassis to shake off some chains and race hard at the front. Hated to see the contact between Carpenter and Montoya end what was a great march up the order for Juan. The crazy restart with 10 laps to go shook everything up in the championship race, with Power going high to brush the wall, and Helio getting bogged down. They both fell several spots back and out of the running for the win, and out of their tie for the championship lead.
And then, out of abso-freaking-nowhere, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Josef Newgarden made mad moves to finish first and second, and the Andretti dominance at this track remains intact. Here’s a fitting place to drop an Helio “Are you kidding me?” quote — it was startling to see the onslaught! Kudos to their strategists for making great calls to grab fresh tires when they could. It certainly paid off. The heart breaks for Tony Kanaan — he had the thing covered — but what a wild finish!
Unlike Pocono, this track is too short for the field to get terribly strung out. You don’t get pack racing, but there are usually a few pairs of cars in contact with each other and it makes for much more interesting racing. More, please!
Tags: Iowa
I think you have a double standard on attendance, Steph. I see overheads on TV of massive empty seats on twisties, but no “hard to feel invested” comments from you on those. Why? Detroit: 15,000 in the stands, maybe, and thousands in the sky boxes. That’s OK because it’s Roger’s race and he uses it for corporate outreach, etc. Iowa: thousands of sponsor guests in blue shirts in the tents, 25,000 in the fans, horrid and hard to feel invested? How is that different than Detroit? If you want to be critical of attendance, by all means do so, including Iowa. But let’s have one standard for all events, OK?
I understand your point, Bill, and perhaps my wording was poor (sports cars roaring by in the background). But Detroit claimed 40,000 on race day and has been climbing, while Iowa is in steady decline after packing the 35,000-seat house for years. I don’t get especially invested in twisties that have poor attendance, either. I do my best to objectively respect events that are on the upswing and acknowledge the ones that are in decline. It’s a far better idea to identify a problem and try to diagnose it before it becomes a permanent issue than it is to pretend the problem isn’t there in my opinion.
I don’t recall any comment from you on attendance at any twisty track. Did I miss it? Again, if you want to consider attendance, great. I support a one-standard approach to that 100%. Just consider (and maybe comment on) them all, not just the ovals. That’s all I ask.
I consider attendance at every race, and I know I’ve commented on it at twisties many times. The live blogs from Detroit and St. Pete this year come to mind off the top of my head. If we have a live blog going for a weekend, comments of that nature will tend to go in there; if not (such as this weekend), they might end up in our first impressions columns by default. And we’ll often talk about it on the podcast as well.
You ought to have at least tied the poor weather to Iowa’s attendance, Steph. On a track that is not located within a major metropolitan area and won’t allow for racing in the wet, a poor weather forecast will destroy the walk-up crowd and even keep advance ticket buyers at home (me and the spring NASCAR race at Texas, for example).
Given that weather was an issue on Friday and a storm with the potential to spawn tornadoes was in the area around green flag time, I thought the crowd was quite fair.
That is absolutely a fair point, Skinkster, and I’m a bit embarrassed to have missed it. That’s a by-product of not really having time to focus this weekend apart from sitting down give minutes before the green flag. All this talk of poor oval attendance has me on heightened alert, I guess. Thanks for pointing that out.
Billy’s 100% right. I remember the 2010 race, when it poured cats and buckets in Omaha (where I was living at the time) the morning of the race, which led me and my brother to talk and talk and talk about whether or not to go (and, mind you, we’d bought $60 seats in advance, so it was mostly a matter as to whether or not the 6-hour round trip would be for naught). We finally threw the dice and went, even though it was still monsooning at my house and a 80% chance of rain in Newton, and wound up being rewarded by the Racing Gods with a pork chop, some sweet potato fries and an excellent afternoon of racing. Mind you, we are Hard Cores (with myself probably ranking among the fringiest of the fringe…I’ve enjoyed watching the SCCA Runoffs run in the snow before), so we probably not very representative of a “casual IndyCar fan”, so I’d fully imagine that anybody who thinks that there’s less than a 50% chance that the race will go off and that there’s something else they could be doing at the time would rather save the time (and money, if they were planning on walking up) and just catch it on TV instead.
As Paul said Indy car has raced here since 2007 I was there as Paul was and his 80 percent is pretty close if you want nitpick 75 would be really close…prices have increased yearly they used to have family pack tickets but have not for past few years .I feel attendance was down due to moving it out of June and no support races..we had bigger attendance than the truck race!! They need June date back in 2015 and add more reasons to come…I don’t feel trucks and Indy car are a good mix . that’s two entire different types of race fans……people want value for the money so they need to provide that and people will come back…one note there was by my estimate 5 to 6k people you don’t see on TV- camper parking and sponsors tents those people also had seats in grandstand but probably chose to stay in hospitality area which I don’t blame them…I love my home track …haven’t missed a indycar race there yet…our new young ceo needs to shake thing’s up to get the Indycar fans back….
ILL SAY IT AGAIN!!!!!! Omg William!!!!
This year has been the most fun and most infuriating being the huge Will Power fan that i am lol hes been killing me sometimes lol
For years I have paid ticket and hotel cost to sponsor a family from Kansas to attend the race weekend and this year we could not get into the pits and garages on Friday when the IndyCars were on the move. That’s part of the charm of Iowa. It’s up close and personal. Because of Nascar rules you could only do the fan walk Friday and had to pay $30 more for Saturday to go behind the scenes of “what”? No activity, just to look at parked cars, really?. They messed up bad. Don’t fix this and the upfront in your face IndyCar Iowa experience is over. I don’t sponsor folks to drive 8 hours to look at parked cars or look at cars through a fence. Big mistake for Iowa to jam IndyCar under Nascar rules. Totally killed the true Iowa Indycar fan experience. I stood by the ticket booth and saw one family after another get turned down and walk away angry as hell for being shut out of the garage experience on Friday. Race was good Saturday night but there were a whole lot of hours between the day when many people just stayed in hotels until race time. What a loss for Iowa. Next year we may not be back. It was always Indy – Kansas – Iowa and now it may just be Indy only. Shameful.