Iowa Speedway SOLD!

NASCAR buys Iowa Speedway. I have several thoughts on that. This is a good thing for the city of Newton. This brings financial stability, confidence, hope for the future, and plenty of money to support the track on its own without more help from the taxpayers. NASCAR is the second largest professional sport franchise in America after all. They have money, political power, and will know how to use the Iowa Speedway best. But this doesn’t mean its all good news. Newton and Jasper County should be prepared for political issues with ISC.

Since the track opened in 2006 the track saw growth the first few years with IndyCar, the NASCAR Nationwide, and Camping World Track series races. But then the new shiny facility lost its momentum and seen attendance slipping in recent years. Having five race weekends was too much, especially with one competing against the college football season and another against the 360 Knoxville Nationals (where 10,000 race fans and prospective ticket buyers are already at) made terrible business sense. They were smart to cut down to three weekends for 2014.


The ownership group of the Clement family is not known for their money managing skills. Constant rumors of the track bouncing checks and being behind on payments at local businesses in Newton has been around since the track opened in 2006. I give credit though to Stan Clement, he wanted to build a track, make it successful, help the community, and then make it appealing to sell at a profit later to someone like NASCAR. He accomplished all of that and no one else did. Getting the Manatt’s involved was smart from several aspects, but they were never invested in this business venture long term. Other than hiring Chuck Spicer who is well respected in the racing community, and a couple of other people, the track rarely hired passionate racing people to run the business side of things. It was always a family member, or someone like Bobby Hansen who was a great basketball player, good radio commentator for Hawkeye basketball, and overall good ambassador for the state of Iowa, but what the heck does he know about racing and the companies that want to be involved in the sport? I just hope Chuck Spicer stays involved in the management of the track. It will be interesting to see who ISC brings in for a management team in the next few months.

The downside to this is that NASCAR will not likely make room for the IndyCar series on the Iowa Speedway schedule in the future. IndyCar has not had many races on ISC tracks for four years now other than at Fontana, California. This has left the IndyCar series racing on mostly road courses and very few oval tracks in the country - Indianapolis, Texas, Milwaukee, Iowa, Pocono, California – where the series used to race at ISC owned tracks Chicagoland, Kansas, Richmond, and Phoenix. There was a falling out of some kind between the two racing organizations and IndyCar has suffered.

Even if NASCAR does bring the Cup series to Newton in 2015 or 2016, I don’t see how they maintain fan attendance outside of the first year or two once the newness wears off. Stock car racing is boring. That’s why attendance is down and you see tons of empty seats on TV today. Even on a racetrack like Iowa Speedway where Rusty Wallace designed it perfectly to be able to have side by side racing and passing, the cars today can’t pass because the cars are all equal and are sucked to the ground with aerodynamics. The COT (car of tomorrow) car was a huge flop, and even though the cars were redesigned again with the Gen-6 car, the racing hasn’t improved.

I sincerely hope Iowa Speedway is successful, but if the product is no good, and tickets stay expensive, who will come to witness it? Especially when it’s on TV for free? There are a lot of other forms of racing in the state of Iowa that has better entertainment value for your dollar.