Inside Iowa Speedway's Busy Two Week Stretch of Racing

No race track in America has had a busier couple weeks than “The Fastest Short Track On The Planet,” Iowa Speedway.

Once this weekend comes and goes, it’ll mark their fourth race in two weekends, spanning the ARCA Menards Racing Series, NTT IndyCar Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR K&N Pro Series.

“It‘s a good kind of busy,” track president David Hyatt told NASCAR.com. “There‘s a lot stirring and going on at the property. That‘s cool and I think it speaks to trying to give something back to the race fans we have here in Iowa. They‘re pretty resilient, we even have a bunch of them that stayed through the course of the week. It‘s pretty exciting. We figured our own Iowa Speedweeks would be something fun we could kick off here.”

Hyatt pointed to all the work behind the scenes that needs to get done in an orderly fashion leading up to this weekend’s doubleheader. Having only 14 year-round, full-time employees, it’s a big ask to keep the property in top top shape, clean up campgrounds and restrooms, make sure water is running — the whole nine yards.

“We have a team that buckles down and does a fantastic job of it,” he said. “I‘ve had the background of setting up, tearing down and going to races every week, and we‘ve never run back-to-back race weekends here at Iowa. For this team to step up, do things that‘d normally take a couple weeks and have some rest in the middle to keep digging through is absolutely amazing and inspiring; they’re knocking it all out of the park.”

Friday evening’s main event, the first of two combination events with the K&N Pro Series East and West, has become a staple of the divisions’ seasons for the last few years. At the halfway point for both series with more points on the line, it’s turned into one of the biggest races on the calendar.

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“Part of that is based on our geography, and candidly, I‘d like to think some of that is based off of what a great race track this is for them,” Hyatt said. “I can‘t take credit for the design, but I will take credit for operating it now. Everybody that comes in here seems to love to race at this facility and like to come back to it. For the combined K&N East and West to come here and put on this show is outstanding.”

Casey’s General Store has had an association with the K&N Pro Series race dating back to 2013. Their name is plastered along the property, from the walls to Victory Lane and anywhere in between.

“They‘re all over this place,” he said. “To be tied to that event here, for us to see our partners happy about it, and fans to be happy, that makes us happy about it.”

The Casey’s General Store 150 will go green on Friday, July 26 at approximately 6:45 p.m. CDT. FansChoice.TV will have live coverage of the event.