Iowa Speedway may be the “House that Rusty Wallace Built” but it has become a “Field of Dreams” for the IndyCar Series.
Wallace, the former NASCAR Cup star who won 55 races in his career and the 1989 Cup championship, designed the .894-mile Iowa Speedway, which was completed last year. But as the IndyCar Series arrived for Sunday’s Iowa Corn Indy 250, the state embraced this race as its own “big-time” event.
Crowds were large, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Sunday’s race drew an announced crowd of 35,838 fans to the 27,500-seat facility. An additional 5,000 temporary grandstands were added for the race weekend, which left more than 3,000 fans with standing room only.
Granted, this isn’t the Indianapolis 500 or even the Indianola 500 — a community south of Des Moines — but the state of Iowa showed grass-roots support for Indy-car racing.
The race fans of Iowa are big supporters of open-wheel racing. The famed Knoxville Raceway, home of the Knoxville Nationals — the biggest event in sprint-car racing — is less than 25 miles from Iowa Speedway. Knoxville is also the home of the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum. And with 56 race tracks throughout the state, only Pennsylvania has more than Iowa.
Thanks to the former NASCAR driver turned television announcer, there is now a home for the upper echelon of auto racing in the Hawkeye State.
“So far, the track has been getting rave reviews,” Wallace said. “It’s like a dream come true for me as a designer. This is the first track I’ve ever designed. And we put a lot of time in it with Paxton Waters and with Andy Vertrees from Indianapolis.
“We decided to build a race track that had compound banking. I always believed that in order to have side-by-side racing, you had to just bank up the second lane and bank up the third lane. So, this race track is the first-ever track in the United States that is seven-eighths mile in length, and has a 12-, 13- and 14-degree bank angle.”
What’s even more amazing than the facility is the huge outpouring of support the fans at Iowa have given to the IndyCar Series. Friday’s open test had several thousand fans in the paddock area and grandstands lining the fence with cameras ready to click photos of their favorite drivers.
Of course, Danica Patrick was among the more popular drivers, but fans also wanted to catch a glimpse of the other 18 drivers in the 19-driver lineup for Sunday’s race.
Saturday’s qualifications and Indy Pro Series race drew an announced crowd of 17,000.
That was the appetizer for Sunday’s main course, which featured a high-speed short-track race where it was difficult to pass, but the fans loved it any way.
“I’ve talked to Tony Kanaan and Helio Castroneves and Scott Dixon, and all three of them said, ‘My gosh. I never drove on a track that had this much grip,’” Wallace said. “You can run all over the race track. From the bottom, the middle, the top of the track. In fact, when I was talking to Tony Kanaan and Tony told me, ‘I know I’m running close to 230 miles an hour at Indianapolis, but I feel like I’m running faster at Iowa because the G forces are so high.’”
Wallace split his time between his duties as a track designer at Iowa Speedway and his television duties for ESPN at Saturday night’s NASCAR Busch Series race at The Milwaukee Mile. After that race was over, Wallace flew his own plane back to Iowa, where he arrived late Saturday night to watch Sunday’s IndyCar Series race.
“I’ve been waiting for this event for a long time to happen,” Wallace said. “I watched the testing. I watched Scott Dixon do the test last year for the IRL and watched his smile that he has. He was just beaming when he jumped out of the car.”