Loop Data Box Score : Iowa Speedway

• Thursday, July 31st, 2025
• NASCAR Wire Service - Reid Spencer

Can Blaney Reclaim the Corn Crown? Iowa Win Defense Starts Now

At just the right time, Ryan Blaney is trending in the right direction.

After a rough stretch that saw his number of DNFs (did not finish) mount to seven in the first 20 races of the NASCAR Cup Series season, the driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford has scored two straight top 10s heading to Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol at Iowa Speedway (3:30 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Blaney is the defending winner at the 0.875-mile short track, where he led 201 of the 350 laps in last year’s series debut there, including the last 88.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Blaney said. “That’s a special place for me and for my mom’s side of the family. We had a lot of people there last year supporting us. That was a fun Victory Lane. It’s not often that you get to have 80 people with you in Victory Lane, and heck, half of them I’d never met before—kids of cousins I haven’t seen in years.

“So that was special. So, I’d like to go up there and defend, and we’ll see if we can do that.”

With strips of new pavement added in the corners for last year’s race, the track features a variety of nuances drivers must master.

“It was a tricky one,” Blaney said, “because getting into (Turn) 1, your braking point was old pavement, but then you would get to new pavement like 10 to 15 car-lengths later. So, it was like judging, ‘Hey, I have to break and lift here in the old stuff, but then I have to recalibrate for when I get to the new stuff.

“The corner pace was incredibly high, but I still think it put on a good show.”

The DNFs aside, Blaney hasn’t had a quarrel with the speed in his cars this year.

“We’ve just been in some bad spots at the wrong time and have not been able to get the finishes that we want or deserve,” he said. “I look at it as we’re doing a lot of good things, and I’m happy with where our group is at, and I’m happy with the speed.

“I’m hoping that things smooth up for us, and that’s all you can do, really.”

With a June 1 victory at Nashville and his current seventh-place position in the standings, Blaney, for practical purposes, has clinched a spot in the Cup Series Playoffs.

With four races left in the regular season, however, the competition for the final three berths in the postseason intensifies.

Bubba Wallace added his name to the Playoff rolls with his dramatic victory last Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That left Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing teammates Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece on opposite sides of the Playoff bubble, with Buescher 42 points to the good over his fellow Ford driver.

Buescher led 15 laps in last year’s Iowa Race but finished 18th. Preece, who has an Iowa victory to his credit in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, was 27th in the No. 41 Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing.

Equally intense is the battle for the Regular Season Championship. Chase Elliott leads Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron by four points, with another teammate, Kyle Larson, just 15 points back in third.

A Hendrick driver has topped the standings after the last 20 Cup races, with Elliott, Byron and Larson sharing the honors. Blaney was the series leader for the first two races of the season.

Larson was fast at Iowa last year, and he sees Sunday’s race as an opportunity.

“We had a good weekend going there last year, securing the pole, a stage win and leading a lot of laps before getting caught up in an incident,” said Larson, whose 34th-place finish in the inaugural Cup race did not reflect the performance of his No. 5 Chevrolet.

“I think it’s going to be quite a bit different this year. I watched the IndyCar race (July 13), and it appeared the new pavement has changed quite a bit, and I imagine the grip level has changed quite a bit more. I don’t really know yet but it’s going to be different. But as I said before, we were good last year, so hopefully we’ll be good again.”

• Iowa Speedway
• Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol
• Busch Pole Award Pole Winner: Chase Briscoe
• Age: 30
• Team : No 19 - Bass Pro Shops Toyota
• Owner: Joe Gibbs
• Crew Chief: James Small
• Chase Briscoe won the Pole Award for the Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol with a lap of 23004 seconds, 136933 mph
• This is his eighth pole in 167 NASCAR Cup Series races
• This is his sixth pole of 2025
• This is his first pole in two races at Iowa Speedway
• William Byron (second)- fourth front-row start of 2025, started top-four in both Iowa races
• Kyle Larson (third)- best start of 2025 since he was second in the Coke 600 in May, started top-three in both Iowa races
• Shane Van Gisbergen (21st) was the fastest qualifying rookie

• Sunday, August 3rd, 2025
• NASCAR Wire Service - Reid Spencer

Byron Burns the Field, Not the Fuel, in Iowa Fuel-Mileage Masterclass

An extraordinary spat of cautions in Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol allowed William Byron to save an extraordinary amount of fuel, and that proved the difference in Byron’s second victory of the season and first since the DAYTONA 500.

Squeezing 144 laps out of his fuel cell at an Iowa Speedway track where the fuel window is roughly 100 laps, Byron crossed the finish line ahead of a trio of pursuers—pole winner Chase Briscoe, first and second stage winner Brad Keselowski and defending race winner Ryan Blaney—all on different strategies.

Byron’s margin of victory over second-place Briscoe was 1.192 seconds, with Keselowski in third and Blaney in fourth both within a car-length of the runner-up at the finish line.

Byron’s No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet ran out of fuel during his celebratory burnouts on the frontstretch, forcing him to cut the smoke show short.

“Man, how about that for some fuel mileage?” Byron asked rhetorically after climbing from his car. “We’ve had our fair share of things not go our way with fuel mileage, and just super thankful for (crew chief) Rudy (Fugle), all these guys, all the engineers, all the engineers back at the shop.

“Just this whole race team, we’ve been through a lot this year. It’s been a lot of growing pains. It’s been tough on us. But it feels really good today to get a win.”

After running in the top five for most of last Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Byron ran out of fuel in overtime while running third. With Fugle coaxing him repeatedly to save fuel at Iowa, Byron conserved just enough.

And at last, the result of the race matched the speed he has shown consistently this season.

“Honestly, I felt like we had a good car and just kind of raced it and just tried to be there at the end, and we were,” said Byron, who led the first 67 laps and the last 74. “And luckily, the fuel was enough there at the end.

“I think I ran out right there (during the burnout). That’s why I stopped.”

With his first victory at the 0.875-mile short track and the 15th of his career, Byron regained the series lead by 18 points over teammate Chase Elliott, who finished 14th after pitting for fuel on Lap 283 of 350.

What enabled Byron to stretch his fuel to 144 laps was a series of seven quick cautions within 65 laps of the start of the final stage. All told, 12 cautions slowed the race for 72 laps.

Briscoe got close to Byron during the final 64-lap green-flag run but couldn’t challenge for the lead.

“There at the end, I was running William down,” Briscoe said. “I thought I was really in the catbird seat there, and I just got there and kind of stalled out.

“I kind of experienced that when I was leading earlier. I caught the back of the field, and same thing; as soon as I got there, I just kind of died.”

Needing a victory to qualify for the Cup Series Playoffs, Keselowski won the first two stages, but his fuel advantage on the final run was negated by the abundant cautions.

“Just the way the yellows fell,” Keselowski said. “We had so many yellows there in Stage 3 that it got the 24 (Byron) and the 19 (Briscoe) to where they could make it on fuel pitting way outside the window, and we just couldn’t get back by them.

“Got back by a lot of guys; restarted I think 24th there after we pitted and got all the way up to third, but that was as far as I could get.”

Ryan Preece ran fifth and trimmed the lead of Roush Fenway Keselowski teammate Chris Buescher from 42 to 23 points in the battle for what could be the final berth in Playoffs.

Brickyard 400 winner Bubba Wallace rallied from two laps down and overcame damage to his No. 23 Toyota to finish sixth. Alex Bowman was seventh, solidifying his hold on a potential Playoff spot by maintaining a 63-point edge over Preece.

Carson Hocevar came home eighth, followed by Joey Logano and Austin Dillon.

Byron led 141 laps to 81 for Briscoe and 68 for Keselowski.

The quest for the final Playoff spots continues in next Sunday’s Go Bowling at the Glen on the road course at Watkins Glen International (2 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

• Drivers Entered: 37
• Laps Scheduled: 350
• Margin of Victory: 01.192 Seconds
• Time of Race: 3 Hours 17 Minutes 47 Seconds
• Average Speed: 92.905
• Cautions: 12 for 72 laps
• Lead Changes: 10
• Green Flag Passes: 2,861 (10.3 passes per green flag lap)

• Iowa Speedway
• Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol
• Race Winner: William Byron
• Age: 27
• Team : No 24 - Raptor Chevrolet
• Owner: Rick Hendrick
• Crew Chief: Rudy Fugle
• William Byron won the Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol, his 15th victory in 275 Cup Series races
• This is his second victory and 12th top-10 finish in 2025
• This is his first victory and second top-10 finish in two races at Iowa Speedway
• Chase Briscoe (second) posted his first top-10 finish in two races at Iowa Speedway It is his 11th top-10 finish in 2025
• Brad Keselowski (third) posted his second top-10 finish in two races at Iowa Speedway
• Riley Herbst (30th) was the highest finishing rookie
• William Byron leads the point standings by 18 points over Chase Elliott