Photo: Chris Owens
There had been some fears that Indy Nxt’s trip to Iowa Speedway would end with a single-lane race, but an IndyCar practice session helped ensure wheel-to-wheel action took place.
The circuit had been repaved in various areas since 2023, with differing grip levels between the areas of old and new asphalt around the short 0.88-mile lap. Indy Nxt points leader Louis Foster called it “frustrating for us drivers because it makes it single-lane”, predicting a “boring” race.
But the shortening of the race from 75 to 55 laps (and the majority of it running behind the pace car) meant drivers could push harder during green flag laps than they had anticipated, and IndyCar’s drivers had also helped grip up the repaved sections when they had a half-hour practice session added to their schedule specifically to rubber in the high line and trial a new tyre compound.
Foster went on to win the race by using the high line to pass Andretti Global team-mate James Roe Jr late on, while Andretti Cape’s Salvador de Alba spent plenty of time on it as he charged from 10th to third. Formula Scout asked the podium trio how confident they felt about the grippiness of the high line, and the impact of IndyCar’s extra running.
“Well for me, it was just the way to get up front. So I didn’t know exactly how much grip it was going to be, but I just go for it, and it figured out it worked very well,” replied de Alba. “It was definitely a lot of grip up there. And especially the first couple of laps that we were not up to speed. That’s when it worked a lot.”
Foster added: “I was just following James at the start of the race so I didn’t really get to use it a lot and I wasn’t planning on using it. But when I did the overtake, I didn’t really know it was going to be grippy. I just kind of trusted the car to allow me to send it in from that high up. So it was more of a hope and a prayer, than a know.
“Because sometimes in our practice it was quite slippery. But we knew that they had run that practice session in the high line to give us some grip. It’s super helpful when they do that, actually.”
Since Roe led the way most of the race, he did not run the high line. But he shared his thoughts on the repaving.
“You have it at turn one and two, it’s repaved two lines, so you don’t really – you can be on the new pavement on both sides. And it’s the difference between old pavement and new pavement that we found is a difference. So it’s more so three and four, when you’re coming in to three you switch over pavement. And it’s easy to get a little high there, and I think that’s even in IndyCar where you saw the incidents happening.”