From a NASCAR Fan’s View
The Iowa Speedway almost isn’t a short track. It is a tricky 7/8s of a mile and it will test the NASCAR Cup drivers as one of them tries to best the rest of the field for a win. The lineup looks pretty normal, but this fan expects the racing to be anything but normal.
Once again, Chase Briscoe will lead the field to green as he won his sixth pole in this 2025 Cup season. Even with his fast Toyota and those six poles, he only has one win and sits eighth in the standings. It does appear the #19 JGR Toyota has a good handle on qualifying, but it hasn’t really translated into multiple victories. Of course, that one win guarantees he will be in the playoffs, but one has to wonder if this race at Iowa will show him to be another multi-time winner or just another also-ran.
Once again, William Byron has shown up with good speed and he starts outside pole with Briscoe on the front row. He has also had some rough weeks, despite consistently showing up with speed and regularly qualifying well. Unfortunately, he has suffered a lot of bad racing luck and has not had the finishes it looked like he was going to have. Just take a quick look at last weekend at Indy. He was poised to finish in the top five and ran out of fuel. That quickly ruined the top-five finish it looked like he was going to have. To say the least, he hasn’t had a very good summer, and it has dropped him from the top spot in the standings to second behind his Hendrick teammate, Chase Elliott. That’s really not so bad, but I am sure he would rather get back to running for the wins.
Starting third is Kyle Larson. It appears he has begun to make the turn from his run-in with bad racing luck and has had a couple of very good finishes over the last couple of weekends. Both times, he has finished in the top five and that is, at the very least, a good start on a turnaround, especially since he finished second to Bubba Wallace at Indy. That, by the way, catapulted Bubba into the playoffs with his win from a somewhat desperate situation in the playoff picture before his win. Now, at least, he is guaranteed a spot in the playoffs and won’t have to worry about being points above or below the cutoff.
That brings us to the rest of the playoff possibilities. Counting today’s race at Iowa, there are four races left to make the playoffs and only three spots open to do so. Unfortunately, points may not be the way those three spots are filled. Three more new 2025 winners will kill the chances of the three that are presently qualified by points. Well, that is if one of those three doesn’t win a race either this weekend or in the three races to come. I don’t know about you, but that puts a bit of pressure on Chris Beuscher, Alex Bowman and Tyler Reddick. Other than one or all three of them winning over the next few weeks, three new winners puts them out of the playoff picture completely. Of course, they still have hope until that actually happens.
Someone winning from outside the top sixteen over these next four races makes these next four races even more dramatic. I mean, there are several outside the cutoff spot that could very well win one of the upcoming races. Just because they haven’t won yet, doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t.
I can name about five or six right off the top of my head that it would not be a surprise if they won a race in the next four. A few of those names are Ryan Preece, Kyle Bush, Ty Gibbs, A.J. Allmendinger, Michael McDowell, and Brad Keselowski.
Of those I just mentioned, some of the ones I believe more likely to win than others would be Ty Gibbs, Ryan Preece and Brad. That’s not to say the others don’t have a chance, it just seems to me these are the more likely ones. Of course, there are several others we all would call dark horses. Some of the more obvious names would be Carson Hocevar, Erik Jones, and Zane Smith. Though there are a few others, these wouldn’t surprise me if they did win.
So, this race today at Iowa Speedway should prove to be a very interesting race, if nothing else. Personally, I’m interested in a few things. First, I’m anxious to see if one of the top three can pull off the win, backing up their qualifying lap times. After that, I want to see if there is a new winner or a totally unexpected winner from further back in the standings.
Of course, there are a couple I would rather see win than others, but I’m going to be watching more just to see what happens…
Hey, this is Russ and that’s my view… See ya next time…
All views expressed are strictly the opinion of the writer
© August 3, 2025 – all rights reserved
Rusty Norman, Nascarfansview.com and Justafansview.com
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