IndyCar Series, Iowa Speedway plan to extend contract

The Iowa Speedway and IndyCar Series held a press conference Sunday morning to discuss extending the contract of the Iowa Corn Indy 250 and keeping the race in Newton past this year.

And while both sides agree that it will be at Iowa Speedway, there was not a clear-cut answer for how long.

“We are excited to be at Iowa Speedway every year that we have come here, and this year is special because we have the opportunity to extend this thing,” said Terry Angstadt, president of IRL’s commercial division. “The contract between us and the Iowa Speedway and the Iowa Corn Indy 250 will be extended for the foreseeable future.”

Well, how long is that exactly?

“We are looking at two years right now,” Angstadt said. “That seems to work out for us.”

While two years is what both parties are seeking, the official contract of the race has yet to be signed.

“We have been busy, but it’s getting close,” said Stan Clement, the chief executive officer at Iowa Speedway.

The other topic discussed at the press conference was a date for the race. But again, there was nothing concrete served up to the media in attendance.

“We have no incentive to force a date,” Angstadt said. “This time frame works for us. It may be changed by a few weeks, but we don’t anticipate anything major.”

“Weepers” caused for Saturday’s delay, which in turned canceled the qualifying runs.

The first bump in the Iowa Speedway road occurred Saturday night during qualifying runs of the Miller Lite 100 and the Iowa Corn Indy 250, and then the problem forced about an hour delay to the start of the Miller Lite 100.

Due to the excess rain in the area, water seeped onto the track at turn 4 and caused major problems for officials at the speedway.

Sunday’s race went on as scheduled so the problem has been minimized for now.

“There are a lot of things we can control, but unfortunately, we can’t control the weather,” Iowa Speedway designer and former NASCAR driver Rusty Wallace said. “We were really upset that we had a couple of weepers yesterday that canceled qualifying. We are going to do some research after this event is over and see if there is anything we can do to help that.”

IndyCar Series driver Dan Wheldon said Saturday night that this is not the first incident of weepers at racetracks across the United States. And Wallace said it is actually pretty common.

“Almost all the tracks have suffered something like that,” Wallace said. “It’s not an excuse though. We have to figure out what’s causing it at our racetrack. We have a 14-foot drain underneath the track, so it is quite confusing how and why this happened.”

Wallace wasn’t the only person upset about the situation. Danica Patrick put a heavy emphasis on qualifying coming into the race. That hope for the No. 7 Boost Mobile driver got tossed out when qualifying was canceled due to the seepage. Patrick was forced to start fifth based on entrant points.

“We had a pretty good day,” Patrick said Saturday. “I wish we would have had a chance to get out and make a qualifying run because I think we could’ve had a higher starting position. We started off with a good car, but it just wasn’t our day. The yellows started to come out, and we were at the wrong place at the wrong time. But it was a top-10 finish for us, so if this is the worst finish we have this season, I can’t complain.”

Patrick’s teammate at Andretti-Green Racing also wanted a chance to qualify.

“I think the Team 7-Eleven car was really strong today,” said Tony Kanaan, who crashed Sunday and has yet to finish a race at Iowa Speedway. “I am disappointed that we didn’t get to qualify because I am positive we could’ve started better than seventh.”